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During the winter peak in coronavirus cases, things got busy in my hospital, but nothing close to what happened in places like New York City last spring or Los Angeles this winter.\\xa0 Hospitals in these places went way past their capacity, but did this strain on the system lead to worse outcomes?\\xa0 Absolutely.

On today\\u2019s podcast, we talk with Brian Block, lead author of a Journal of Hospital Medicine study that showed that patients with COVID-19 admitted to hospitals with larger COVID-19 patient surges had an increased odds of death. \\xa0 We talk about the findings in his study, which also included some variation in the surge hospitals as well as potential reasons behind these outcomes.

We\\u2019ve also invited two other guests, Denise Barchas and Sunita Puri, to describe their hospital experiences in a COVID surge.\\xa0 Denise is a ICU nurse at UCSF who volunteered in New York during the spring surge of COVID cases.\\xa0 Sunita is the Medical Director of Palliative Medicine at USC\\u2019s Keck Hospital & Norris Cancer Center in Los Angeles.\\xa0 She is also the author of numerous books and essays, including \\u201cThat Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour\\u201d (if you haven\'t read it yet you should!)

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