New York health officials were warned in writing that a Brooklyn nursing home where 55 patients have died of coronavirus was overwhelmed — weeks before it began topping the state’s official list of resident COVID-19 deaths, damning emails show.
Cobble Hill Health Center CEO Donny Tuchman sent a desperate email to state Health Department officials on April 9, asking if there was “a way for us to send our suspected covid patients” to the hospital built inside the Javits Convention Center or the US Naval hospital ship Comfort — the under-utilized federal medical facilities on Manhattan’s West Side.
“We don’t have the ability to cohort right now based on staffing and we really want to protect our other patients,” Tuchman wrote in a chain of the emails reviewed by The Post. He was denied.
“I was told those facilities were only for hospitals” to send their overflow patients, Tuchman said.
At the time Tuchman sent his plea, only 134 of the 1,000 beds at the Javits Center were full and the Comfort — which had just been reconfigured to treat up to 500 COVID-19 patients — had a mere 62 on board.
Adding insult to injury, the Navy hospital ship wound up treating just 179 patients before Gov. Cuomo on Tuesday said it was no longer needed. READ MORE HERE.
************************
-----5/10 CUOMO REVERSES POLICY PARTIALLY; AARON FEIS--MAY 10, 2020--Hospitals can’t discharge coronavirus patients to nursing homes: Gov. Cuomo
This post is provided for information purposes and is closed to all comments. Comment and questions must be referred to the media source referenced.
Patients in New York hospitals must now test negative for the coronavirus before they can be discharged to nursing homes, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday — partially reversing a policy that forced sickened seniors into facilities housing those most vulnerable. “We’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit,” said Cuomo during an Albany press briefing. “Period.”
The ruling partially overrides a controversial March 25 order that nursing homes cannot deny admission or readmission on the basis of a positive or suspected COVID-19 case.
That policy has been roundly criticized as counterintuitive for forcing coronavirus carriers into nursing homes, even as Cuomo has repeatedly acknowledged that seniors are among those most susceptible to the virus. READ MORE AT https://nypost.com/2020/05/10/hospitals-cant-discharge-coronavirus-patients-to-nursing-homes-cuomo/
***********
NURSING HOME SCANDAL UPDATE JANUARY 2021 https://nypost.com/2021/01/13/cuomo-refuses-to-fully-disclose-covid-19-nursing-home-deaths-watchdog/
No comments:
Post a Comment