With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane,
E.R.’s at Others Overflow
A month after Hurricane Sandy struck New York City,
unexpectedly shutting down several hospitals, one Upper East Side medical
center had so many more emergency room patients than usual that it was parking
them in its lobby.
Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn
had 1,100 more emergency patients last month than in November 2011; the
increase was mostly attributed to a hospital shut by the storm.
Angel Perez in a makeshift emergency
room last week at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, where emergency visits
have increased 25 percent.
White and blue plastic screens had been
set up between the front door and the elevator banks in the East 68th Street
building of that hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. The screens
shielded 10 gurneys and an improvised nursing station from the view of people
obliviously walking in and out of the soaring, light-filled atrium.
“It’s like a World War II ward,” Teri
Daniels, who had been waiting a day and a half with a relative who needed to be
admitted, said last week.
Since the storm, a number of New York
City hospitals have been scrambling to deal with a sharp increase in patients,
forcing them to add shifts of doctors and nurses on overtime, to convert
offices and lobbies to use for patients’ care, and even, in one case, to go to
a local furniture store to buy extra beds.
At Beth Israel Medical Center, 11 blocks south of
the Bellevue Hospital Center emergency room, which was shuttered because of storm damage, the average number of
visits to the E.R. per day has risen to record levels. Visits have increased by
24 percent this November compared with last, and the numbers show no sign of
dropping. Hospital admissions have risen 12 percent compared with last
November.
Most of the rise in volume is from
patients who had never been to Beth Israel before. An emergency room doctor at
the hospital described treating one patient who said he had been born at
Bellevue and had never before gone anywhere else.
Emergency room visits have gone up 25
percent at NewYork-Presybterian/Weill Cornell, which in Bellevue’s absence is
the closest high-level trauma center — treating stab wounds, gun wounds, people
hit by cars and the like — in Manhattan from 68th Street south. Stretchers
holding patients have been lined up like train cars around the nursing station
and double-parked in front of stretcher bays.
In Brooklyn, some patients in
Maimonides Medical Center’s emergency room who need to be admitted are waiting
two or three days for a bed upstairs, instead of four or five hours. Almost
every one of the additional 1,100 emergency patients this November compared
with last November came from four ZIP codes affected by the storm and served by
Coney Island Hospital, a public hospital that was
closed because of storm damage.
The number of psychiatric emergency
patients from those same ZIP codes has tripled, in a surge that began three
days before the hurricane, perhaps fueled by anxiety, as well as by
displacement from flooded adult homes or programs at Coney Island Hospital,
doctors said.
The Maimonides psychiatric emergency
room bought five captain’s beds — which do not have railings that can be used
for suicide attempts — at a local furniture store, to
accommodate extra patients. The regular emergency room had to buy 27 new
stretchers after the hurricane, “and we probably need a few more,” the
department’s chief, Dr. John Marshall, said.
The emergency room and inpatient
operations of four hospitals remain closed because of flooding and storm
damage. Besides Bellevue and Coney Island, NYU Langone Medical Center and the
VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, both near Bellevue on the East Side of
Manhattan, are closed.
While the surge in traffic to other
hospitals has been a burden, it has also been a boon, bringing more revenue.
On the Upper East Side, the storm has
helped Lenox Hill Hospital, which has a history of financial problems. It took
two or three wards that had been turned into offices and converted them back to
space for patients. Emergency room visits are up 10 percent, and surgery has
been expanded to seven days a week from five.
“We usually operate at slightly over
300 beds, and now we’re at well over 550,” Carleigh Gustafson, director of
emergency nursing, said.
Conversely, administrators at the
shuttered hospitals, especially NYU Langone, a major teaching center, worry that
their patients and doctors are being raided, with some never to return.
NYU’s salaried doctors are being paid
through January, on the condition that they do not take another job. But at the
same time, they need a place to practice, so NYU administrators have been
arranging for them to work as far away as New Jersey until the hospital
reopens. Lenox Hill alone has taken on close to 300 NYU doctors, about 600
nurses, and about 150 doctors in training, fellows and medical students.
Obstetricians and surgeons from the
closed hospitals have been particularly disadvantaged, since they are dependent
on hospitals to treat their patients. Many displaced surgeons have been reduced
to treating only the most desperately ill, and operating on nights and
weekends, when hospitals tend to be least well staffed.
“I think there’s no question that a lot
of people have postponed anything that they can postpone that is elective,”
said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, senior vice president at NYU.
In mid-November, Dr. Michael L.
Brodman, chairman of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center, sent out a memo
saying his department had taken on 26 NYU physicians, as well as nurses and
residents, but “clearly, that is too much for us to handle long term.”
Since then, 15 of the physicians have
gone to New York Downtown Hospital, while Mount Sinai has retained 11 doctors
and 26 nurses.
“We are guests in other people’s
homes,” Dr. Brotman of NYU said, “and we are guests who have to some degree
overstayed their welcome.”
Natalie Knight 12/13/2012
Current Events #2 Core Earth Science
Hartocollis, Anemona.
"With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane, E.R.’s at Others
Overflow." Nytimes.com. New York
Times, 3 Dec. 2012. Web. 9 Dec. 2012.
I
read the New York Times article written by Anemona Hartocollis entitled “With
Hospitals Closed After Hurricane, E.R.’s at Others Overflow.” This account is
one of several hospitals and tells of population influxes as a result of
Hurricane Sandy, which hit just five weeks ago. A majority of the hospitals
that are still open in New York City have been required to accommodate more
patients, making up for the hospitals that remain closed for the time being.
Many emergency rooms, including New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell, have
purchased and began utilizing new gurneys and stretchers, placing them wherever
they will fit. In many cases, this includes surrounding elevators and in
lobbies. At a different hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center, within the past
month there has been a 24 percent daily increase compared to the number of E.R.
visits last November. Here, stretchers “…have been lined up like train cars
around the nursing station and double-parked in front of stretcher bays.” At
many medical centers in which patients are being cared for, some people are
waiting 2-3 days for attention, instead of what was before a mere 4-5 hours.
However, Hartocollis also highlights the benefits that the storm has had on
some medical institutes. In some cases, including that of Lenox Hill Hospital,
Sandy has brought in a considerable increase in revenue, along with many new
patients. The hospital, which apparently has a history of financial problems,
is starting to recover from the recent economic downfall over the past few
years by using business to its advantage. Although most doctors have found new
hospitals at which to work, considering there is no shortage of patients, some
specialty doctors, such as surgeons, are out of work for the most part because
operating rooms are being used for patients.
After
reading this article, I was reminded of the long lasting effects that Hurricane
Sandy has had. Based on where I live, I was not presently aware of many of the
effects of the storm other than the several day power outages for the residents
of Bronxville. Now, I realize that the consequences for many people were much
more severe than that, including the loss of homes and lives, and much of the
aftermath is an ongoing process. It is interesting that the hospitals that I
have read about in this article are not just caring for people who were
physically harmed by the storm, but also common illnesses and injuries. The
article principally addresses the state of care centers for people that need
help, rather than why people need
help. For this, I enjoyed reading the account because it varied from many of
the articles that have been written since the storm.
I
really liked that Hartocollis wrote about both positive and negative sides to
the current hospital situation, while highlighting the fact that the negative
influence has been greater. She drew information and statistics from a
multitude of hospitals and medical centers, however she did not focus a great
deal on any of them. I would have preferred if she had gone into detail on one
or two hospitals, and specifically told about the trauma some patients are
facing, and the struggles the hospitals are enduring in order to meet their
patients standards. Other than that, I enjoyed reading the subject matter of
the article and appreciated that, even a month after the storm, people are not
dismissing it, but are focusing on how to readjust.
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