In today's paper, Hallie Nell Swanson reports on St. Luke's Hospital's continuing work to help people affected by Sandy:
St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital found itself hosting roughly 125 evacuated patients from downtown Bellevue and NYU hospitals after their generators failed during Sandy—an influx of patients it dealt with by implementing a 24-hour command center, adding makeshift bedrooms, and having many staff members not leave the hospital for four days. And two weeks after Sandy ripped through New York, the hospital is still caring for dozens of those evacuated patients as their facilities recover.
St. Luke's and other hospitals across New York are still working overtime weeks after Sandy because four major hospitals in the city --- NYU's Langone Medical Center, Bellevue, the Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, and the VA Hospital on 23rd Street --- remain unable to reopen. Hospitals that took in patients from other places in New York have had to take on extra work. St. John's Episcopal Hospital in the Rockaways has incurred $3 million in unexpected expenses, and may be forced to close. As the city cleans up, the damage caused by Sandy continues to linger.
