<< Previous   of   Next >> Dan Bates / The Herald  (click to enlarge) Alex Webster, 12, eats lunch from his bed at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle in March. Alex had to be sent to Swedish because Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center didn't have room for him.

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Everett and Edmonds hospitals squeeze in more beds

Providence and Stevens hope to help the region cope with its frequent patient space shortage

By Sharon Salyer
Herald Writer

It took the experience of 12-year-old Alex Webster of Everett to highlight just how serious the region's hospital bed shortage can be.

Alex previously had been diagnosed as a "brittle" Type 1 diabetes patient. Getting sick from common viruses, like the flu or a cold, can trigger a dangerous reaction, causing his brain to swell.

In March, after initially being treated at Providence Everett Medical Center's emergency room, he waited six hours to be transferred to Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, which specializes in pediatric care.

But with no beds available at Children's intensive care unit, he was instead transferred to Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.

Strained with extra patients from flu season, hospitals throughout the Puget Sound region were jammed to capacity that day.

Now, at least two hospitals in Snohomish County are adding more beds in the hope of easing some of the shortage.

The addition of 10 more medical-surgical beds at Providence Everett Medical Center later this month will allow the hospital to admit an estimated 730 additional patients a year.

An additional eight employees, mostly nurses, are being added to help treat the patients, costing up to $600,000 annually.

"It is a significant addition," said Dr. Larry Schecter, the hospital's chief medical officer.

Although flu season has passed, the hospital still is often nearly filled to capacity, he said.

It's an interim step the hospital can take to help ease bed shortages until the hospital's new $600 million building in north Everett opens in 2011, he said.

Last year, the hospital admitted 24,674 patients.

Stevens Hospital in Edmonds plans to add an additional 12 beds by this fall, allowing it to admit up to 800 more patients a year. Last year, 7,900 patients were hospitalized there.

The project is expected to cost about $500,000.

In mid-February, hospitals throughout Snohomish County, brimming with patients, left some patients waiting, sometimes for hours, for beds to open up. Others were transferred to hospitals outside the county.

"It definitely will help with that problem, not solve it completely, but it will go a long way," said Jack Kirkman, Stevens Hospital spokesman.

Alex Webster was discharged from Swedish Hospital on March 22.

He had to be hospitalized again, this time at Children's Hospital, about a week later to help bring his blood sugar levels back under control, his stepmother Sara Nakagawa said.

Since then, "he's doing great."

Nakagawa said she was surprised and gratified by the attention Alex's case received, and the spotlight it put on the region's hospital bed shortage.

At the time, she was stunned that the shortage was so acute that Children's Hospital didn't have room to treat her son.

"Until it affects your life, I don't think you would know," she said. "People didn't know what was going on."



Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.