Cy-Fair health care system at a 'tipping point’ as COVID-19 burdens EMS teams, hospitals

Reed said his department is seeing an uptick in 911 calls from individuals who cannot access routine health care from their regular physician or telemedicine appointments because the health care system is so overwhelmed.

To help alleviate the situation, Reed said the Cy-Fair Fire Department took an “unprecedented” step Aug. 18 and implemented provider-initiated refusals. This means when a patient wishes to be taken to a hospital but their condition does not warrant an emergency room visit, officials are now telling them they will not take them to the hospital.

Cy-Fair Fire Department officials are evaluating the community’s needs and making modifications daily to ensure first responders are available and can provide the same level of service they would before the pandemic. This could mean eliminating certain tasks to allow respite for his team, Reed said.

“I need these guys and gals rested because they’re working hours on end, and so we’re canceling trainings [and] things that aren’t an absolute need-to-have so that they can go home and rest,” he said.

The department typically works with Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital, HCA Houston Healthcare North Cypress and Memorial Hermann Cypress Hospital, but Reed said first responders have been forced to expand outside their normal service area.

Reed said his paramedics began transporting patients to a freestanding Memorial Hermann Convenient Care Center in Katy off the Grand Parkway and Westpark Tollway earlier this week.

“We’re having to go to destinations that are further just because every hospital system is just completely at capacity,” Reed said. “And some of the hospitals are calling us and they’re saying, ‘Listen, we’re doing everything that we can. There’s nothing more we can do for four hours. Can you give us a break?’"

Reed said being vaccinated against COVID-19 will likely prevent hospitalizations and death even among those who do contract the virus. But he said even before the vaccine was readily available, the community proved spread could be mitigated, so those who do not want the vaccine for personal reasons still can take other steps to protect themselves and others—including staying home, wearing a mask in public, washing their hands and using hand sanitizer.

“The problem is our playbook has run dry, and so we are now [operating by] trial and error on things," he said. "And the hope is that we as a collective society ... can get a handle on that because we have the solution. We just need to accept it and to lift each other up. The recourse is if we don’t, we will have a catastrophic failure in the health care system.”