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.
Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
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.
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Times Topic: Hurricanes and Tropical Storms (Hurricane Sandy)
Storm Victims, in Cleanup, Face Rise in Injuries and Illness(November 20, 2012)
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
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.
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