During Wednesday morning's Charleston Area Medical Center board meeting, board members heard about an influx of patients at CAMC Memorial over the weekend, which resulted in many patients who normally would have been admitted being treated in the emergency room.
Board members heard from Jeff Oskin, the vice president/administrator of CAMC Memorial.
Oskin said a significant back-up of emergency room patients took place from midnight Saturday through Monday morning.
"Our admission rate generally runs about 40 to 50 percent, so half of those patients were in need of inpatient beds," he said.
Physicians from other areas of the hospital came to the emergency room to treat the patients, he said.
"It was just that the care they received was done in the emergency department rather than up on the floor," he said.
Oskin said the back-up mainly was due to the nursing shortage, but was partly attributable to an increase in patients. He said there wasn't an adequate number of nurses assigned to work with patients who were admitted.
"There is a demand, and unfortunately we know there is a nursing shortage nationally, and West Virginia is hit even more so because of our population base and the need for young people to go to school to be nurses," he said.
"Everyone talks about there being no jobs in West Virginia," he said. "There are lots of nursing jobs and we have to get to the young people to make sure they understand there is a future right here."
Dale Witte, hospital spokesman, said he didn't have figures available Wednesday that would show nurses leaving CAMC over time.
Oskin also said they are "looking at mechanisms to identify discharges earlier in the day" and reaching out to patients to apologize.
Hospital officials could point to no specific illnesses causing an increase in emergency room patients, but pointed to flu as one possibility.
David Ramsey, president and CEO of CAMC, blamed the increase in patients for the back-up.
"I think we're working on the flow issues but the patients keep coming," he said. "Unfortunately we have the only emergency rooms in the Charleston area."
He also mentioned the nursing shortage.
"It's a little more difficult here for a couple of reasons," he said. "One of the main ones is the number of nurses, their spouses can't find employment in the region and so they're following their spouses outside the state."
The Gazette-Mail reported last month that CAMC was considering cutting programs and services to meet a goal of $20 million in profit for the year.
Ramsey said it was "too early" to talk about specific cuts.
"It's the same discussion that's taking place at the Capitol right this minute," he said. "What do you do to survive?"
Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5163, or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter.