This episode did seem a little slower, but most of the scenes seem to be a table setter for the next "Episode of Death" as I call it as reading Fink's book first, or the part where the final evacuation orders come down and there is a mortal fate for the immovable patients, and don't forget everyone's pets.
The most important part of this episode seemed to be Vera/Dr. Pau start to lose grip with regards to the "marking patients comfortable" part, which is word for word the real Dr. Pau's defense of her actions during this crisis, and when she started to resist dissent against other doctors and hospital staff on how to make the patients comfortable exactly (i.e. The murder or mercy question). The morphine part is going to be important in the next episode. But still, there was a good mix of genuine compassion of taking good-practice care of the hospital patients in general, and then when she went rouge prescribing morphine with no real consent of the patient or surrounding MD's.
You also saw a lot of blame, and deserved, being put at the feet of Rene Goux (Canadian Character Actor Stephen Bogaert) acting as the top hospital executive for Tenet for not accepting any critical patients and being almost violent towards anyone coming in. This is in addition to the inhumane treatment of their lessee on the seventh floor, Life Care. I was waiting for more of this coming in, as ultimately this disaster was mostly the cause of a lack of procedures on the part of Tenet Healthcare.