The spike in COVID-19 cases is prompting hospitals nationwide to consider reopening field hospitals originally constructed to handle the first wave of the pandemic. For a hospital in Tennessee, though, staffing considerations are undermining efforts to reopen a field hospital to handle the influx of new cases.

While patients are waiting days in emergency rooms across the city now, there are no immediate plans to open the alternate care center at the former Commercial Appeal building, according to the Daily Memphian.

Richard Walker, the emergency medicine physician with the 400-bed care center, says plenty of beds are available but with the nursing shortage, there are hundreds of beds the hospital can’t staff.

The $51 million alternate care center was built to take pressure off local hospitals by giving them a place to send COVID-19 patients who were recovering but not ready to be discharged. Fully staffing it around the clock requires about 80 doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants and more than 400 nurses. Emergency rooms everywhere have become what Walker describes as boxes with bottlenecks at both ends.

Click here to read the article.