NUHEALTH SYSTEM HURRICANE SANDY UPDATE #11 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2012 9:00AM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 1st, 2012
PRESS CONTACT:
Shelley Lotenberg
shelley@numc.edu
516-572-6055
NUHEALTH SYSTEM HURRICANE SANDY UPDATE #11 Thursday, November 1, 2012 9:00AM
East Meadow, NY……Arthur A. Gianelli, President/CEO of the NuHealth System, announces that the census at the Nassau University Medical center is 517 on the morning of Thursday, November 1st, 2012. There are 36 patients in the ED waiting for beds, so our admitted volume is 553 patients, which is the highest it has ever been.
Nursing leadership was able to manage this census by redeploying ambulatory and administrative nursing staff as well as utilizing Long Beach Medical Center (LBMC) nursing personnel. LBMC has still not contacted its staff regarding how they will be paid, so we are compensating these nurses as temporary employees in order to ensure that they have continuity of income and that they continue to report to care at NUMC for their Long Beach Medical Center patients as well as for their nursing home residents presently living at the A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility.
Communication is still an issue. The outside phone service is up, but the carriers for our pager system are down. We continue to rely on an overhead pager system, but this is at best a stop gap solution.
The old emergency department waiting room is being converted to on-call space to free up rooms on the 8th floor for patients. We have also set up hallway beds and put back into service rooms on the 9th floor that were being renovated. We received a waiver from the State to exceed our licensed bed capacity.
We will make an effort today to secure placement of 20-30 A Holly residents at nursing homes out east to permit us to place an equivalent number of Long Beach nursing home residents, who have been inpatients, at A Holly. This will help decompress the hospital census.
We will be meeting with FEMA representatives today and anticipate that, in all likelihood, we will be sheltering up to 200 FEMA employees in one of our old buildings to support the search, rescue and repair operations occurring throughout the southern part of Nassau County. We have also been in contact with the State regarding the possible use of unoccupied resident housing for out-of-area clinical staff and the possible renovation of A Holly units to take nursing home residents from the Rockaways. We learned yesterday that many of the nursing homes in the Rockaways have been destroyed and cannot be salvaged.
We remain in good shape regarding supplies, equipment, food, and power.
The health centers, with the exception of Hempstead, will remain closed until power is restored.
We will update you as developments warrant.
ABOUT NUHEALTH
NuHealth is a Long Island health care organization delivering essential medical care and disease and lifestyle management to everyone at every stage of life. Also known as Nassau Health Care Corporation, NuHealth is a public benefit corporation managing the operations of Nassau Medical Center, A. Holly Patterson Extended Care and a network of Family Health Centers that bring primary and specialty care out into the community. By emphasizing wellness, cultural sensitivity and collaborative efforts with the North Shore-LIJ Health System, NuHealth is working to make good care more affordable and easier to access.
For more information about NuHealth or its Centers of Care, visit www.nuhealth.net.