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Indiana hides its hospital diversion info, other states post it online

Data obtained by 13 Investigates shows Indiana hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units declared diversion status for tens of thousands of hours last fall.

Bob Segall

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Published: 11:20 PM EST March 2, 2022
Updated: 11:47 PM EST March 2, 2022

This winter, with nearly 10,000 daily visitors to Indiana emergency rooms, many hospitals across the state struggled.

In late December, the Indiana Department of Health’s chief medical officer painted a grim picture of overcrowding.

“We are often seeing patients being held in the emergency room for hours and sometimes days until a bed becomes available,” said Dr. Lindsay Weaver, adding that “patients are being cared for in hallways and conference rooms.”

A few days later, the Indiana Hospital Association announced Hoosier hospitals were "overwhelmed" and in a "state of crisis with dwindling capacity left to care for patients.”

The crisis prompted many Indiana hospitals to move to "diversion," a request to ambulances and paramedics to take their incoming patients somewhere else.

Statewide data obtained by 13 Investigates shows hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units across Indiana declared diversion status for tens of thousands of hours last fall, even before a rapid increase in COVID-19 cases prompted much worse overcrowding in December and January. Some hospitals remained in round-the-clock diversion status for days — even weeks — at a time.

Then, the data suddenly stopped.

While Indiana hospitals are required to report their diversion status to the Indiana Department of Health every day, a 13News investigation finds the state health department will not release the information to the public. WTHR has also discovered state health officials do not keep the hospital diversion data they are mandated to collect — even at the height of a pandemic-fueled crisis.

And the decision to withhold information about ER and ICU diversion status from Indiana residents while also allowing historical data to disappear comes as a sharp contrast to the transparency shown by other states that post hospital diversion information in real time, where it can be utilized by both ambulance crews and residents seeking health care.

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