When a health care system goes from "lean and mean" to just "mean"

A report on National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States says that Seattle and surrounding King County, Washington are on the forefront in pandemic planning.

Dr. Jeff Duchin, chief of infection control for the Seattle-King County Public Health Department, speaks frequently with hospitals, agencies, and businesses. His message includes the possibility that any pandemic could be major in scope:

Duchin tells them the number of people who could get sick and die is like nothing in living memory.

"The bad pandemic scenario is absolutely the worst thing you can imagine," Duchin said during a recent hospital planning session. "It stresses the system in a way that no other disaster does."

Federal estimates do not assume a worst case scenario, but still show 80,000 people would be sick in the Seattle area within the first two months of a pandemic, according to NPR's report.

"No health care system is built to manage these large numbers," Duchin said. "Currently the health care system is designed to be efficient - lean and mean. And unless we start investing in changing that to prepare for public health emergencies, it's just going to be plain mean."

Social Distancing

NPR says Seattle's public health officials "acknowledge they have few tools to minimize the impact of a pandemic. Duchin says the best strategy would probably be to close down places where people gather..." That might include canceling Seattle Sonics basketball games and closing movie theaters.

To slow the spread, Seattle officials say they'd be urging people to stay home from work and avoid going out in public whenever they can. They'll do that early - when only a few dozen people are sick in the entire county.

Duchin says officials would probably close schools quickly, an idea which jolted his own household.

"When I mentioned this to my own wife, I said, 'We have to be prepared to home-school our kids for six to 12 weeks,'" Duchin said. "She looked at me like I had two heads - both of them bald."