A top New York heath executive has slammed the ‘ridiculous’ red-tape on the USNS Comfort as it accepts just 20 patients in the four days since it docked in New York City on Monday.
The Navy hospital ship was dispatched by President Donald Trump as a beacon of hope to the struggling city as the coronavirus outbreak in the Big Apple reached 51,809 cases and 1,562 deaths as of 5pm Thursday.
There are now 236,086 U.S. cases and 5,647 deaths across the country.
Yet with ambulances forced to bring patients to a hospital for a coronavirus test first, a long list of medical conditions that the Navy won’t treat on board, and a host of other bureaucratic hurdles causing many delays, the ships beds lie empty and its staff idle.
Michael Dowling, the head of Northwell Health, New York’s largest hospital system, has called the Navy’s restrictions a ‘joke’ as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also argued the ship should begin to accept coronavirus patients.
The USNS Comfort has accepted just 20 patients since it docked in Manhattan four days ago
The ship was to supply the city not only with much needed beds but with desperately needed medical personnel who would treat non-coronavirus patients on board.
Yet the ship’s 1,000 beds remain mostly empty as strict protocol sees it refuse to accept not just coronavirus patients but a long list of patients with other conditions despite the increasing crisis in New York hospitals, as overwhelmed health care workers begin to fall ill and the high number of patients sees some die in hallways before they can be hooked up to a ventilator.
‘If I’m blunt about it, it’s a joke,’ said Michael Dowling, the head of Northwell Health, New York’s largest hospital system.
‘Everyone can say, ‘Thank you for putting up these wonderful places and opening up these cavernous halls.’ But we’re in a crisis here, we’re in a battlefield.’
The need for medical personnel in New York City is so severe that Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday pushed President Donald Trump to begin a national enlistment that would send people with medical training from other states to the front line of the epicenter.
Despite the drastic need, there are currently some 1,200 crew aboard the USNS Comfort who are idle with a lack of patients due to the strict protocols in place that has seen them refusing to take certain medical conditions.
In Los Angeles, the USNS Mercy has also only accepted 15 patients.
New Yorkers came out in their droves on Monday as the gigantic white vessel pulled in to dock in Manhattan, ignoring social distancing guidelines as they gathered to see the hospital ship that was supposed to lessen to crippling burden on the city’s hospital system.
After four days, the hospital ship has done little to ease the stress, with delays and time-wasting protocols frustrating hospital chiefs.
As well as refusing to accept coronavirus patients, the Navy has sent hospitals a list of 49 other medical conditions that they will not treat on board leaving few remaining patients available from over-stretched hospitals to transfer to the ship.
Even protocol around the transfer of patients who are suitable has caused further delays as none can be brought directly to the Comfort without a visit to a hospital first.
Ambulances are forced to bring patients to the hospital for a lengthy evaluation, which includes a coronavirus test, and them pick them up once this is finished to bring them to the ship.
Speaking on MSNBC on Thursday evening, Gov. Cuomo criticized the inability of the ship to take coronavirus patients, stating that new protocols must be found to alleviate the numbers of patients being sent to other hospitals.
Cuomo said that the Navy was refusing to accept coronavirus patients because of rules in place surrounding the disinfection of the ship.
He argued, however, that with many New Yorkers remaining inside their homes under the shelter in place order and many surgeries placed on hold, the number of hospital patients that did not have coronavirus was not great enough that the ship could continue with its refusal.
‘What has happened is the COVID patients have overwhelmed the hospitals, Cuomo admitted.
‘Hospitals have now just basically turned into ICU units with COVID patients and because everything is closed down, there are fewer normal trauma cases, and since I stopped all of the elective surgery, you don’t have those patients. So the offloading of non-COVID patients really doesn’t exist.
‘You have protocols that aren’t really established, that have to be set up. Theoretically, the U.S. Navy ship Comfort could take a non-COVID trauma case. So I don’t know how that protocol works on that,’ he added.
‘But look, this is, we’re all doing the best we can, trying to put together a system, that can handle over 150, 200% of what the system is designed to do. And the federal facilities are an advantage. For us, what it is going to come down to is the staff burnout, staff getting sick, we have 80,000 volunteers, can we get them oriented to the right hospitals and in the right places.’
Already on Thursday, President Donald Trump had given approval to Cuomo to open up the temporary medical facility in the Javitts Center in Manhattan to coronavirus patients after it was originally established to treat non-COVID-19 patients only.
The move came as the city struggles to establish more beds for patients and medical staff to treat them as Mayor de Blasio announced that 65,000 more beds would be set up in the Big Apple in the next four weeks.
Dowling told the New York Times that the Northwell Health hospital system has already torn itself apart to find space for further beds.
On March 20, Northwell hospitals housed 100 COVID-19 patients. This had risen to 2,800 by Thursday.
‘It’s pretty ridiculous,’ he said of the Comfort.
‘If you’re not going to help us with the people we need help with, what’s the purpose?’