SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Photo: Maria Danalakis

Two weeks after Hurricane Sandy forced the evacuation of Coney Island Hospital, the institution reopened yesterday with limited operations, with full services expected to come back online in the first days of 2013.

The hospital, at 2601 Ocean Parkway, is offering limited outpatient services, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Patients should enter through the Tower building on Avenue Z, and can call (718) 616-6360 for more information.

Coney Island Hospital was evacuated the afternoon after Hurricane Sandy made landfall, knocking power out to the building and flooding the complex’s basements, where generators were stored.

Rebooting the emergency room is the Heath and Hospital Corporation’s next priority, which will take several more weeks.

“Full service for [Coney Island and Bellevue] hospitals, including their critical care units, their operating rooms, their in-patient units for Coney Island, we believe we can do that by the first week of January,” said Alan Aviles of the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation (HHC), according to NY1.

Located within the Zone A evacuation area, Coney Island Hospital suffered extreme flooding throughout the complex. Not only will boilers, electrical systems and air conditioning need replacement, but the hospitals also stored backup generators, IT servers and assistance, and emergency room support technologies in basements that became submerged with water.

HHC said they will make changes to the hospital’s setup to better prepare for storms and flooding in the future, including moving backup generators and IT support to higher floors.

FEMA will cover some of the damages, as well as reimburse the city for some of the work done.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has requested $300 million for emergency room repairs resulting from Sandy.

Photo courtesy of Maria Danalakis

Authorities evacuated Coney Island Hospital and its emergency room yesterday, transferring patients to facilities in better-faring parts of the city following Hurricane Sandy.

Coney Island Hospital was in a flood zone and has been using generators since the hurricane caused power outages across Southern Brooklyn.

The evacuation began yesterday afternoon, according to a notice being posted on their website at 6:30 p.m. Additionally, the notice states:

Because of the urgent and evolving situation, family members may not be notified of a patient’s new healthcare facility location until after the transfer takes place. In addition, the hospital is experiencing problems with the phone system and is not able to receive calls at this time. Staff are making every effort to communicate with family members as patients are safely placed in the appropriate healthcare facility. Thanks for your patience and please check back for updates.

A fabulous addition to any home — a map of Coney Island Hospital and surrounding environs, circa 1929. Source: Fab.com

The people behind the modish website Fab.com, whose mission in life is to make their “customers, partners and employees smile,” as well as “to help people better their lives with design,” invite you to better your life with the design of an “Authentic 1929 Vintage Brooklyn Map” of Coney Island Hospital — because nothing says “hip and trendy” like a map of Coney Island Hospital hanging on the wall of your living room.

Fab is open to everyone and is free to join. They offer exclusive access to daily curated design sales. Here’s their take on the circa 1929 Coney Island Hospital map:

“Let’s take a trip back in time. A time before fixed gear bicycles, ironic moustaches, and artisanal mayonnaise. Before Spike Lee did anything, let alone the Right Thing, and ‘gentrification’ was used to describe white people in Brooklyn. It’s time you hang some real history on your wall, and this Authentic 1929 Vintage Brooklyn Map is just the thing. As colorful as the borough it depicts, this slice of Bucktown is authentic and one of a kind.”

I’m sorry, but… Bucktown?

In either event, the humble beginnings of the hospital — the biggest employer in Southern Brooklyn as of 2011 — dates back to 1875. It opened its doors as “a first aid station on the oceanfront beach nearWest Third Street,” mostly tending to those whose feet were cut by broken bottles.

Source: randomplaces/Flickr

Rampant obesity has forced hospitals – and taxpayers – to pay.

Coney Island Hospital (2601 Ocean Parkway) purchased a specially-sized radiographic flouroscopy unit, a type of X-ray machine that provides moving images, for more than double the price of the regular sized unit, to accommodate and securely hold overweight patients.

The regular sized x-ray machines costs $301,000, while the super-sized was purchased for $650,000. It seems as though weight loss not only comes along with health benefits, but economic benefits as well.

According to the New York Post, other hospitals in New York are also spending more on various facilities and machines to provide for the needs of overweight patients. For instance, Jacobi Medical Center of The Bronx installed 40 new toilets specially crafted for individuals weighing up to 500 pounds.

Antonio Martin, chief operating officer for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, told the Post that hospitals the amount of overweight patients in hospitals has increased and therefore, they were forced to make these new arrangements. Martin said that he has seen patients weighing 600 and 700 pounds.

“The cost of a hospital bed that is specifically designed for an obese patient is about three times the cost of a standard hospital bed,” said Martin. “And the price of an extra wide wheelchair is easily double the amount of a regular one.”

For years, obesity has been a public health disaster in America, and it is constantly getting worse. The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation stated that almost 60 percent of New York City inhabitants are overweight. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medical costs associated with obesity have climbed to the alarming cost of $147 billion a year in America.

These statistics and costs have been released at a convenient time for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration, who have rushed to point to the additional costs as an example of need to pass his proposed ban on sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in New York City.

“This is going to be worse than smoking ever was,” Bloomberg said, according to Capital New York. “Smoking deaths in New York City are now down to 7,000 a year. Obesity-related diseases are 6,000 and skyrocketing, while the smoking ones are coming down.”

“We just have to do something about it,” he said.

It’s really easy to joke about colonoscopies. Like the one about Johnnie Cochran’s first checkup, when, through clenched teeth, he reminded the doc that if the camera don’t fit, he must acquit. Or the guy who asked his doctor to provide a note for his wife making clear that his head was not, in fact, up there. Or… okay, okay, I’ll stop.

So the topic of rectal health may spur on some silly jokes. But it’s still a serious matter. Dead serious.

After all, colon cancer – a preventable and treatable disease – remains the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths, killing approximately 1,400 New Yorkers every year, according to the New York City Department of Health.

And Russian-Americans are lagging far behind other New Yorkers when it comes to colon cancer screening, recent findings show. So the Department of Health, the Health and Hospitals Corporation, Russian-American community leaders announced a new partnership this morning to raise awareness within the Russian-speaking community.

Get the facts – including statistics and an understanding of why regular colon cancer screenings are important – from the press release below.

Protect yourself. Get the facts.

A nurse at Coney Island Hospital (2601 Coney Island Hospital) got a dose of recognition recently, when The Fund for the City of New York honored her public service and eminent leadership in behavioral health and palliative care.

Donna Leno Gordon won the Sloan Public Service Awards, dubbed the “Nobel Prize of City Government,” given to only six outstanding civil servants in a city of millions.

Gordon founded Coney Island Hospital’s palliative care unit, bringing together a team of doctors from different fields to address the physical, emotional, spiritual and social concerns that arise with most advanced illnesses.

This has been Gordon’s focus at Coney Island Hospital for almost two decades. But Gordon believes she deserves no credit for this award. “This award is not about me, it’s about the entire palliative care field and how far it has come,” she told the Daily News.

In 2010 Coney Island Hospital devoted a 19-bed unit to patients with advanced diseases and possibly terminal illnesses.

Her success has allowed the spread of palliative care into other city and HHC establishments, and because of this Mayor Michael Bloomberg commended Gordon, along with the other five award recipients, at the Cooper Union on March 14.

“New York City is blessed with a great public workforce and this year’s honorees represent not only the best of government, but the very best of what our City has to offer,” Bloomberg said in a HHC press release.

Coney Island Hospital is currently the local and regional leader in palliative care.

Beth-Israel Medical Center at 3201 Kings Highway took a leap into green tech last Wednesday.

A 12-ton clean energy co-generation system was hoisted by crane onto the roof of the Kings Highway Division. The center expects to save $455,000 annually in utility bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 150 cars driving 10,000 miles per year.

The natural gas-fired co-gen unit that is housed within a 20′x8′x8′ container is vital to Beth Israel Medical Center’s Go Green Project. The conversion of the hospital’s heating network from steam to hot water, which will use recycled heat generated by the new energy system to heath the center, is also key to the $4.1 million project.

Flatbush Scoop was on the scene when the co-gen unit was installed, providing the video above.

The going green initiative includes upgrades to the system’s automated controls, the installation of new water heaters, more efficient fluorescent lighting and low-flush toilets.

Ecosystem Energy Services, Inc., the project contractor, has estimated that the co-generation unit will produce enough electricity to help reduce the center’s electrical utility bill by 40 percent.

The co-generation system will go into operation in March.

The final beam, autographed by hospital and community leaders, and marked with an American flag (Photo by HHC Employees Patricia Roman and Gregory Maizous)

Photos by HHC Employees Patricia Roman and Gregory Maizous

Coney Island Hospital (2601 Ocean Parkway) marked a major milestone in the construction of its $10 million Emergency Room expansion project with a steel topping off ceremony on Friday.

Construction on the 7,500-square-foot expansion began almost exactly one year ago, aimed at reducing crowding, increasing the number of treatment spaces and cutting wait times in the facility, which sees nearly 6,000 patients every month.

At the ceremony last week, the final beam of 125 tons of the structural steel skeleton was placed after being autographed by hospital administrators and community leaders.

“The many years of planning and designing of a new Emergency Department are quickly becoming a reality,” said Dr. David Neckritz, the chair of the Emergency Department. “We have all put in a lot of hard work to enable us to better serve the community’s emergency medical care needs.”

When the new emergency department opens in 2012, it will feature three triage rooms for faster front-access flow, 21 treatment and exam rooms, 10 dedicated adult critical care bays adjacent to the ambulance bay, 15 rapid care exam rooms, two airborne isolation rooms and an external emergency decontamination facility.

During construction, the emergency department will remain open 24-hours a day.

Source: nych.com

A beloved 89-year-old Brooklyn mother passed away at a Midwood hospital, and administrators waited seven days before notifying her children, according to the New York Daily News.

“The thought that she laid there cold and dead — it’s a horror,” said Michael Hawa, 64, son of the deceased Catherine Hawa. “It’s just too sad to digest.”

Hawa passed away on November 16 at New York Community Hospital (2525 Kings Highway) and was left in the morgue. Hawa’s daughter Jeanette was about to head over to visit her mother on November 23, when she received a call from a worker at the hospital who told her the news and how her mother was left in the morgue for seven days. The worker apologized to Jeanette. Michael received the same call that day, with the same message and an apology.

Hawa lived on East 5th Street in Kensington until moving into a nursing home two years ago. She married a Penn Central railway clerks’ union member named Edward Hawa in 1946, who passed away in 2000.

A wake and religious service was held for Hawa at Herbst-Trzaska-Waldeck Chapels in Bay Ridge last Monday and she was properly laid to rest at The Evergreens Cemetery on Tuesday.

The emergency evacuations of low-lying areas in advance of Hurricane Irene might have seemed like an overreaction to those residents who didn’t live in the small pockets of the city pummeled by the winds and rain. But, despite the small scale of the damage, it’s undeniable that the city’s civil servants – firemen and police, city authorities and transit workers – had an organized and authoritative response worthy of recognition. But one group of heroes easily overlooked in the wake of the storm worked diligently, if quietly, to protect the city’s most vulnerable.

As the storm rolled up the east coast, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of hospitals and senior homes in coastal areas - including Coney Island Hospital and numerous homes in Sheepshead Bay – to ensure the continuity of medical care for the sick and elderly. Though the media reported on the patient transfers, those who oversaw the pre-storm scramble, including staff who stayed up ’round the clock to care for patients and the decision-makers who took extra precautions with medicine and other care, have gone unpraised. Until now.

Nurse.com has produced a blow-by-blow account of the evacuations, from the moment the orders were handed down to the point where patients could return to their designated homes and hospitals. The report highlights the efficiency of staffs at institutions including Coney Island Hospital in collaborating between departments and hospitals, reaching out to families, and securing proper medical treatment in a scene that could have been chaotic and catastrophic under less-effective leadership.

Hospitals were given just 24 hours to organize staff, review patient needs, and make the move. Coney Island Hospital hit that mark three hours early, according to the article.  Terry Mancher, Coney Island’s Chief Nursing Officer, credits the selfless actions of the staff. “No one said ‘I have to go.’ A lot of the nurses just said ‘Just tell me where I need to go and I’m there,” Mancher said. “I’m so proud of my staff.”

While the storm might have been a wash, the same can’t be said for the expediency with which our local hospitals and homes rose to the evacuation challenge and helped ease patients’ minds. For that, they deserve a little recognition.

Check out the full article on Nurse.com.