By Joe Anuta
Staff members at Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica unveiled 40 new beds Monday and said that the added space for patients will help alleviate overcrowding in the borough, where the closing of three hospitals has left medical facilities scrambling to meet the need for care.
The beds are located in a renovated wing of the hospital at 82-68 164th St. in Jamaica, and will house patients suffering from chronic or long-term illnesses as well as patients who are recovering from surgery. Queens is short 860 beds, based on state estimates.
“The 40 beds are a drop in the bucket, but we’ll take it,” said Borough President Helen Marshall before snipping a ribbon barring the entrance to the facility.
According to Marshall, the borough’s chronic bed shortage has been going on for years, but was exacerbated with the closure of Forest Hills’ Parkway Hospital in late 2008, followed by last year’s shuttering of St. John’s in Elmhurst and Mary Immaculate in Jamaica. Since then the borough’s remaining facilities have born the burden by taking on extra patients.
“Queens was under-bedded long before the other hospitals closed,” Marshall said.
Other officials present at the cutting were state Sen.- elect Tony Avella (D-Bellerose), Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) and Assemblywoman Barbara Clark (D-Queens Village), who agreed with Marshall.
“These 40 beds will in no way ameliorate the conditions caused by the loss of more than 400 beds in this borough, but it is a step in the right direction,” Clark said.
Since 2007, Queens Hospital Center has seen a nearly 50 percent rise in adult emergency room visits — 60,000 patients. There also has been a 10 percent increase in occupancy, which is now consistently at 99 percent, according to statistics released by the hospital.
The added patient load meant that 15 to 20 people did not have a bed to stay in each day, according to Robert Rossdale, deputy executive director of the facility. The patients would have to wait in the emergency department, which was not designed for long-term stays. The hospital also had to send ambulances carrying potential patients to other facilities in the area, a process called “ambulance diversion.”
“The beds should almost eliminate the need for that,” Rossdale said.
And a high-tech feature will eliminate an irritating requirement for some patients.
People who suffer from chronic cardiac illnesses need to have their hearts monitored. Before, that meant wires that ran from the heart to a machine, Rossdale said. But in the new area, heart monitors will wirelessly beam cardiac information from the patient’s body to computers that are stationed throughout the ward.
“Now they won’t have to stay in their rooms,” Rossdale said.
Besides cardiac patients, the beds will serve people suffering from other long-term ailments like pneumonia or kidney problems, said Marie Elivert of Direct Patient Services.
The unit was funded through the state in accordance with the state Berger Commission, which issued a set of mandates for restructuring New York’s health-care system. Provisions set out by the commission called for the closure of only Parkway Hospital in Queens. And the only hospital it suggested should receive funding was the Queens Hospital Center, one of two public hospitals in the borough. The others are privately run.
The new beds, which cost $4 million and will be operational Dec. 22, are part of a four-phase plan for the hospital that will total $22 million. The hospital already had christened a new psychiatric unit and will get a new adult emergency department and a new psych emergency department.
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
