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May 7, 2020

Trinity Health CEO: Stay-at-home pandemic messaging may create other health risks

HBJ Photo | Steve Laschever Dr. Reginald Eadie, CEO of Trinity Health of New England
By Matt Pilon

Emergency rooms across the country have seen drastic declines in patient volumes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the situation has led one of the region’s health system CEOs to probe what’s going on.
 
Dr. Reginald Eadie, CEO of Trinity Health of New England, said his system’s hospitals, which include the flagship St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, have experienced a 40% to 50% decrease in emergency room visits during the pandemic.

While patients may understandably be avoiding routine doctor visits due to fears of catching or spreading COVID-19, Eadie said such a significant drop in emergency room traffic surprised him, since presumably, many patients who end up there have serious or life-threatening conditions and injuries.
“What happened to the heart attacks, strokes, kidney failures etc., that existed prior to the pandemic?” Eadie asked during a recent interview. 

On a hunch, he called four funeral homes, including two in Connecticut, asking about at-home deaths.
One funeral home director told him that since mid-February, his facility was seeing about 20 at-home deaths a month, up from a typical average of seven to 10.

Eadie suspects that trend may be happening across the country, or at least in regions the virus has hit hardest.

“We have a country full of sick people who are sitting at home,” he said. 

He thinks part of the problem is messaging that the public is seeing and hearing.

For example, he recently saw a public service announcement on TV that displayed the following message: “Staying home saves lives. Whether you have COVID-19 or not, stay home! We’re in this together.”

“My mother, a widow, is home alone and I would never want her to see that ad,” Eadie said.

Eadie has seen similar messaging in other places as well. While it’s well intended, the ads could also be misinterpreted, perhaps conveying to a patient who truly needs urgent medical care to try to stick it out at home instead.

“Not everyone needs emergency room care, but if they do and stay home, they are getting sicker and sicker,” he said. “Staying home and being fearful does not clean out arteries or colons or gallbladders.”

(Many hospitals, including St. Francis, ask that patients who suspect they’ve been exposed to the virus call ahead before visiting any provider, clinic, urgent care or emergency room.) 

Eadie said he has had discussions with fellow hospital leaders about trying to insert more nuance into pandemic public messaging about what residents “should and shouldn't do in face of COVID-19.”

He’s also further researching what’s happening to sick people who don’t visit the ER.

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