LINCOLN — It was clear soon after Mark McConnaughey arrived at the Nemaha County Hospital, seriously ill from a suspected COVID-19 infection, that he needed to be transferred to a bigger hospital, one with ventilators, a trauma team and an intensive care unit.

But what happened next had never happened in the 25-year career of Dr. Michael Zaruba, who was staffing the emergency room that night.

Call after call, to hospitals from Lincoln to North Platte, from Omaha to Topeka, ended with the same response: We don’t have a bed in our ICU. As the doctor and an assistant worked to stabilize McConnaughey, they kept calling. Same response.

Zaruba said that, in all, 23 hospitals were called. All full.

Finally, at about 3 a.m. on Aug. 18 — about five hours after the 57-year-old farmer and metalworker had arrived at the Auburn hospital — he was life-flighted to Des Moines, where Mercy One Medical Center had agreed to admit him. He died there.

Zaruba said Thursday that he still struggles to talk about what happened — a problem the state moved to address earlier this week.

“I’ve practiced medicine for 25 years. I never dreamed I’d be in a situation where I couldn’t transfer a patient to a hospital that was close,” he said. “Worse, Mark was one of my very best friends.”

For the full article click HERE