St. Louis woman spends days as “boarder” at crowded emergency room amid COVID surge
By Deion Broxton
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ST. LOUIS (KMOV) — A St. Louis woman spent days in an area hospital after waiting hours in the emergency room and on a gurney in the hallway due to a surge in COVID cases.
Khoshekh Penrose told News 4 she spent three days as a “boarder” at St. Clare Hospital in St. Louis County, because the hospital was overwhelmed with multiple patients.
Earlier this week, during a St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force meeting, Dr. Aamina Akhtar, chief medical officer for Mercy Hospital South, described “boarders” as people with acute illnesses who are admitted into hospitals, but spend time in hallways or areas that aren’t designed to necessarily provide the best care for patients.
Penrose said she normally goes to St. Clare Hospital because the wait is shorter. She went a few days after Christmas for a septic kidney infection. She added she’s been dealing with chronic kidney infections for the last year or so.
“I had a fever of 103 at one point, and I was not considered a priority,” Penrose said. “When I went to St. Clare this time, they had a 9-hour wait. This was very extreme for them. They weren’t prioritizing patients unless there was a severe situation.”
Penrose said the staff at St. Clare hospital tried to send her to Saint Louis University Hospital, but that hospital wouldn’t take her because it was overwhelmed as well. She said she needed to be cared for by a urologist, but St. Clare assigned an infectious disease doctor to treat her, as well as pulling other staff members from different departments.
“I was on a gurney in the hallway,” she added. “It was really interesting to see the nurses being like ‘I’m sorry I’m taking so long, I don’t know where things are.’ By the time I left St. Clare, they were telling–the nurses were telling me about how I was one of the lucky ones that I eventually did get a bed in a room while I was boarding, but there were patients by that point that were in the hallway boarding.”
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