In a change of plans, a temporary hospital at the campus of NYC Health + Hospitals/Coler, a long-term nursing facility on Roosevelt Island, is accepting coronavirus patients transferred from other city hospitals.
Last month, the de Blasio administration announced plans to add 350 hospital beds to the Coler campus. The expansion would accommodate only non-coronavirus patients transferred from other hospitals to make room for surges in coronavirus patients across the city.
But last week, NYC Health + Hospitals announced that stable non-coronavirus and coronavirus patients would be transferred to the campus for treatment in a new facility called NYC Health + Hospitals/Roosevelt Island Medical Center. Patients who will not require intensive care are transferred mostly from other city hospitals, like Bellevue, Elmhurst, Kings County, and Lincoln, the agency explained in a press release.
Tapan Parikh, a Roosevelt Island resident who lives near to Coler, is friends with residents in the nursing care facility. He’s concerned about treating coronavirus patients on the same campus as his friends.
“My friends are a set of artists that live there and who are in wheelchairs, and they are not able to live independentl,y so they get long-term nursing care there to help them live their daily lives,” he explained.
A spokesperson for Health + Hospitals said a total of 145 patients had been transferred to the temporary hospital as of Thursday but wouldn’t say how many are coronavirus-positive. In addition, it was not indicated where the transfer patients are receiving medical attention in relation to the nursing residents.
A request for comment from the Mayor’s Office was not returned.
“I’m getting alarming reports from people on the inside and people on the outside from the community,” said Assemblywoman Rebecca Seawright, whose district includes the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island.
Seawright wants to know more about how the temporary hospital is being operated on Coler’s campus.
"How many people have gotten the coronavirus? How many people have been transferred in with the coronavirus? And how many deaths have there been?" Seawright said. "We owe it to our health care workers. We owe it to our patients at Coler Hospital."
Seawright co-signed a letter along with Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and State Senator Jose Serrano to Dr. Mitchell Katz, CEO of Health + Hospitals.
“[G]iven that the science about methods of transmission is limited and evolving, and the Coler building may not have been constructed in an era of modern HVAC technology, we would like all residents of the nursing home portion of the building tested once a week for COVID,” they write.
When asked for a comment, a spokesperson from Health + Hospitals did not immediately respond.
Unused parts of the Coler campus were brought back online for the temporary hospital. The Roosevelt Island Medical Center staff treating transfer patients is entirely separate from Coler’s nursing staff, and includes doctors, nurses, aids, social workers, and others, the agency explained in a release.