Doctor's offices, ER's filling up with patients with flu-like symptoms

Eyewitness News has reported several times before that the swine flu is making its rounds through the schools,?communities and state.

But there is?another side of the virus,?how?health care workers and hospitals are coping.

It's busier than normal in the Emergency Room at Children's Hospital, Uptown.

"The past?two weeks have been very busy since the children went back to school. They have all shared their viruses and we've had quite a few sick children the city," said?Dr. Annette Figueroa, an Emergency Room Physician at Children's Hospital.

The?E.R. is packed with children with flu-like symptoms.?Waiting times are long,?doctors and nurses are working extra shifts. The laboratory can't process results as quickly.

This past August?there were double the number of E.R. visits compared to August 2008. Flu screenings usually average 50 a month. In August, doctors did 500 flu screenings.?A third of them were positive for Type-A influenza,?meaning they were most likely H1N1.

Over on the Tulane University campus the student health center has also been swamped.

"Last year at this time we might get?seven or?eight ill students walking into the clinic.? This week we've seen maybe 60-70 students that are walking in that are ill," said?Dr. James Farrow,?Director of Student Health Services at Tulane University Uptown.

Even though no cases of?H1N1 flu have been confirmed, 80 percent of the student patients are complaining of flu-type symptoms.

"We have increased our nursing staff. We're running about two extra nurses per day," said?Dr. Farrow.

In?Metairie at the?Ochsner Children's Health Center, pediatricians are also inundated.

"This year is the biggest volume of patients I've seen than?I can ever remember," said Pediatrician Dr. Michael Wasserman. "So yes, we're extraordinarily busy, backed up, trying to work in every patient we can."

Downtown, at Tulane Medical Center, it's the same situation.

"The hospital is much busier with sort of unscheduled visits that you see in an outbreak of respiratory illness. Our emergency room for example is running about 40 percent busier than we would normally see," said Dr. Robert Lynch, The CEO of Tulane Medical Center.

Some patients are unable to get an?appointment in a timely?manner in their doctors' offices, so they are going to the?E.R.

"We're very?concerned if this gets much worse, that the staff will start to get sick," said Lynch.?"That's a big concern to hospitals because the worse form of pandemic is, you not only have patients who have problems, but then we start to lose the staff to care for them, because they become sick."

But still certain people should get medical help.

"Folks who are at risk, pregnant women, people with complicated medical problems, the?very young, the?very old, those folks should be concerned and should seek treatment. For?everybody else, it's probably best to stay home and?just stay away from the public," added Dr. Lynch.?

Tulane says it is being aggressive with vaccinating health care workers and masking patients who have flu-like symptoms.