I live in a small city, and back in 2016, I ended up in the emergency room, after having visited my doctor. My electrolytes were all messed up...low potassium, low sodium, low magnesium. They never found out why, but they admitted me, and I stayed in the hospital for 3 days. It was in February, and the hospital was so overloaded with flu patients, that they had to open an old wing that they hadn't used in years, in order to deal with the patients that were coming in. My nurse turned out to be some administrator, who had been called on to help with the staff shortages. She was awesome, and even after they got me admitted to a regular room, she came to check up on me to see if I needed anything.
I had the same sort of experience, in Nov 2017. I went to my Doc with a slow heartbeat, 45bpm. He ran an EEG trace, took one loot at it and sent me to the local, small town hospital ER. They decided that I needed a pacemaker. There were only two beds available at hospitals that installed pacemakers south of Portland, so they sent me to a cardiac speciality clinic at the big hospital in Eugene, OR. This was in the early weeks of the 2017 - 2018 flu season, which was another big year in the NW.
I am doing well, hardly know I have a pacemaker keeping my heart beating normally.