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Hospitals, physicians and health clinics across the United States are seeing rapidly increasing numbers of patients with the H1N1 virus, marking a seasonally unprecedented volume of patients seeking flu treatment and prompting some facilities to erect triage tents to cope with the onslaught, the Washington Post reports. For example, the number of patients arriving daily at Memphis, Tenn.-based Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center increased from approximately 180 to a peak of more than 400. The facility currently is treating more than 300 patients daily. To manage the surge, Le Bonheur erected a 2,500-square-foot tent in its parking lot, in which physicians, nurses and paramedics triage patients to decide who can go home and who needs emergency department (ED) care. The facility contacts patients who are sent home within 24 to 48 hours to ensure that they are recovering. Similarly, Austin-based Dell Children's Medical Center has erected two triage tents outside its ED to manage the increased patient volume and keep patients possibly infected with the H1N1 virus separate from others. The number of patients arriving daily there has increased from approximately 180 to more than 340. The hospital is also requiring staff to work extra shifts. Noting that the facility is busier than it was in the wake of both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Dell Children's chief of emergency medicine says the hospital is prepared to set up a third tent. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that individual physician offices are also reporting a surge of patients in many parts of the nation. One pediatrician in Austin has had to call in extra nurses to help handle the increased patient volume, adding that the waiting room has been packed and patients have had to circle the neighborhood in search of parking spaces (Stein, Washington Post, 9/27/09 [registration required]; Roser, Austin American-Statesman, 9/22/09).