Patients from Kansas needing to be transferred stranded for days

MISSION, Kan. (AP) – Rural Kansas hospitals are struggling to transfer patients as COVID-19 numbers surge, with some patients left stranded in emergency rooms for a week while they wait for a bed.

Space also was in short supply last winter and again over the summer when the delta variant first hit the state. Motient, a company contracting with Kansas to help manage transfers, says the situation improved slightly this fall, but now is worsening again.

And it isn’t just rural hospitals looking for beds.

Overwhelmed hospitals as far away as Minnesota and Michigan have been calling looking for beds in larger Kansas hospitals. Often there simply isn’t room.