The Riverside County Board of Supervisors Tuesday, Jan. 11, unanimously approved assigning a standing committee to research and find potential solutions to the “significant and detrimentally impactful” problem of delays at hospitals throughout the county in accepting patients brought in by ambulance.New board Chair Jeff Hewitt and Supervisor Kevin Jeffries will proceed, as members of the Fire Ad-Hoc Committee, to investigate why the practice of patient offloading is faltering and how it might be remedied.Staff from the county Emergency Management Department presented data showing a 110% increase in recent weeks in patient offload delays at hospitals, which officials acknowledged had been influenced by coronavirus cases, but the trend line has been pointing up for years.“P
