Patients wait too long to go to emergency dept. and putting themselves in danger

WARWICK, R.I. (WLNE) Emergency physicians at Kent Hospital are noticing people are waiting too long to go to the emergency department, specifically for heart issues.

“Patients will come in and tell us they have had a fever or chest pain for several days. The heart patients are waiting and hoping chest pain goes away,” Dr. Diane Reali-Marini, Assistant Chief of Emergency Medicine at Kent Hospital said.

Dr. Diane Reali-Marini said waiting too long will only cause more harm.

“If we identify them quickly we have treatment options that would minimize the damage to their heart,” Reali-Marini said.

Kent Hospital is seeing a 30 to 40 percent drop in emergency department visits.

“Unfortunately we are hearing from patients that they’re afraid to come to the emergency room,” Reali-Marini said.

Reali-Marini said the hospital has the right mechanisms in place to help minimize exposure to COVID-19 patients, which is why hospitals are now encouraging people to get the treatment they need right away.

“In the beginning, everyone was trying to work out mechanisms to keep everyone safe. The easiest way was to try to limit the number of people in the emergency department to limit their exposure. Now we have enough mechanisms in place to separate patients with enough protective equipment.. enough staff. we can easily treat both COVID and non-COVID keeping everyone safe.”

In terms of precautions, Reali-Marini said there is enough personal protective equipment for the staff, as well as face masks for the patients.

“We have 6 care teams in Kent Emergency department and we’ve tried to take 2 of the care teams and treat all the COVID patients, which frees up the other care teams for non-COVID patients. So we are trying to separate the patients to minimize risk”.

Each person who goes into Kent Hospital is asked a series of screening questions to identify potential COVID patients. Anyone who is admitted into Kent is tested.