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Lenox Hill Hospital Puts Purpose before Profits in Sandy’s WakeOn Oct. 30, as Hurricane Sandy was knocking out power in parts of New York City, the emergency generators at Langone Medical Center (NYU) in downtown Manhattan failed. Eighty-six patients were transferred to Lenox Hill Hospital, located uptown. Between 3 and 6 a.m., new patients were arriving every three to four minutes. Lenox Hill was up to the task. Staff members had begun making preparations and running emergency drills a week before. That morning, they checked the television in the emergency room lobby to get an idea of who was coming in. Triage teams assessed patients as they arrived, assigned beds, ordered medications and assembled critical care teams as needed. By late Tuesday morning, Lenox Hill Hospital was at full capacity, with nearly 100 patients evacuated from NYU and Staten Island University Hospital. Eight of them were babies, including a boy born just after midnight at NYU. Four babies were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. "Both the emergency department and inpatient nurses jumped into action, doing whatever was needed to ensure safe, high-quality care for each patient," said Lenox Hill Nurse Executive Phyllis Yezzo. Nurse Heather Stansbury was nine months pregnant. She was so busy handling admissions from NYU that she almost didn’t realize she had gone into labor herself. She walked down to the overcrowded labor and delivery floor and gave birth to a boy. 
Nurse Heather Stansbury and her baby boy. "Here I was so concerned about my staff and patients' well-being and in the end I wound up being a patient myself with my staff concerned about me," Stansbury said. To serve patients from NYU, Lenox Hill granted privileges to hundreds of physicians, residents and nurses. By the end of November, NYU doctors saw approximately 700 patients at Lenox Hill, including 122 babies who were born there. One labor and delivery nurse was informed that her family was being evacuated by boat while she was working triage in the emergency room. "Our staff’s main focus was on their patients, even when a great many of our staff, in all departments, were experiencing personal and devastating effects of their own as a result of Sandy," said Dennis Connors, Lenox Hill deputy executive director. Lenox Hill and its parent, North Shore-LIJ Health System, pledged more than $2 million raised at the hospital's Autumn Ball on Nov. 5 to relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Proceeds from the annual fundraiser usually go to underwrite the hospital’s capital projects. This year, however, the funds are being redirected to charities supporting residents severely affected by the storm. |
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