Betsy McCaughey: CDC Requires 20 Full-Time Medical Staffers Per Ebola Patient
MCCAUGHEY: "I was just on a conference call with hospital administrators, doctors, and nurses from all over the country discussing that with people from the CDC and Emory university. And the fact is, as of the commentators said, 'What you’re telling us would bankrupt my hospital,' he said, representing a Southern California hospital."
VARNEY: "So there is no word on who would pay for this?"
MCCAUGHEY: "Well, no word on who would pay for it. Treating one Ebola patient requires full-time dedication of 20 medical staff, most like ICU people. So that would wipe out an ICU in an average-sized hospital - more than wipe it out. You need space. Dallas, for example, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital cordoned off their ICU and sent all their emergency patients with other conditions to other hospitals in the city. Not all communities have several hospitals from which to choose. So that’s a problem. But the most important thing is the doctors and nurses are not ready for the challenge of using this personal protective equipment. Even if you see them with the helmet, the respirator, the full [indecipherable] suit. As the CDC said on the call today, even all that equipment is not enough to guarantee the safety of health care workers because it is so perilous to put it on and particularly to remove it once it’s become contaminated."
VARNEY: "Are you saying it would be virtually impossible to set up 50 different — set up 50 hospitals, make room in each one of them for an Ebola patient."
MCCAUGHEY: "Or more."
VARNEY: "Or more?"
MCCAUGHEY: "Even in Nebraska —"
VARNEY: "You can’t do that within how many years?"
MCCAUGHEY: "Oh, it would take a very long time. So many people on the call were just daunted by the expectations. There is the separate laboratory next to the isolated patients, all kinds of — all kinds of adjustments -- where to put the waste. Many states won’t even let you dispose of this waste from such a toxic disease."
VARNEY: "What does it tell you about the future expected caseload when the CDC is calling for 50 Ebola hospitals?"
MCCAUGHEY: "It’s very troubling. Tom Frieden said again and again in the last three months we may have an isolated case or two, but Ebola will not spread 'widely.' That is the weasel word he used again and again, 'widely.' What does 'widely' mean? Well, 50 states is pretty wide."
