Back in August, it was reported that the 3 emergency units at Montefiore Hospital in New York are so overcrowded and unruly that it has endangered patients and staffers.
Patients have to wait for hours to be treated and staffers are regularly attacked by psych patients. “It looks like a refugee camp in a war zone,” said nurse Benny Matthew, 41, who works at the main Moses Campus’ ER in the Norwood section of the Bronx. “I’m from India. Even if I go to an emergency room in my country, I don’t see things like this.”
Now, nurses and patients at Montefiore Medical Center say the real miracle is that no one has died from neglect in their overcrowded emergency rooms.
Just as sure as flu season is coming, they say, tragedy looms for the Bronx hospital that is so packed that ER patients have to share space — in the hallways.
It appears that no progress has been made at the hospital where overcrowding is becoming more and more dangerous to patients as well as staff. With the start of flu season just around the corner, medical staff said they are worried that they are in for a long winter.
“These are sick people,” said Kate Pugh, 37, a Montefiore nurse for five years. “Basically you're just running around putting out fires instead of giving quality care. “This is not an easy fix. We just don’t have space.”
On her busiest days, Pugh said she is treating up to 15 patients in the ER at one time. The New York State Nurses Association, the union representing 42,000 caregivers — which is currently negotiating a new nurse’s contract with Montefiore — said there should be one nurse for every three patients.
Back in August, City councilman Ritchie Torres, alarmed by the harrowing accounts from hospital staffers, sent a letter to the Department of Investigation calling for an immediate probe. Torres decided to write the letter after he was approached by a group of nurses working at Montefiore who complained to him about the horrendous conditions that patients and workers have to constantly deal with.
“Relegating recipients of Medicaid to cramped and crowded hallways — teeming with sick patients, many of them with infections — creates an environment conducive to more illness, not less,” wrote Torres.
In an interview, Torres said “There seems to be a profound disconnect between the immaculate image Montefiore projects out to the public and the nightmarish reality of its own emergency room.”
In August, Torres sent a letter to the city Department of Investigation urging the agency to “probe Montefiore’s practice of placing Medicaid recipients in crowded hallways that neglect patient care.” Unfortunately, Even that didn’t bring the hospital around.
When patients and nurses started calling his office with news about the hospitals latest epidemic, Torres thought they were going to tell him about food poisoning or Legionnaires disease.
“I was shocked,” Torres told The News. “I find it troubling that there has been no serious attempt at problem solving. This is a problem that has existed for years. Rather than wait for tragedy to happen why not take a preventative approach. The epidemic of hallway placements is a disaster waiting to happen.”
“Montefiore has had ample time to address the concerns we raised months ago,” Torres said. “No serious effort has been made to fix these problems. In the end talk is cheap.”
However, a hospital stay isn’t. Louis A. Collazuol, 87, said he paid $250 a day under his medical plan for a space on a cot in the hallway when he went into Montefiore earlier this month for a case of acute constipation.
That space came with no bathroom, no television, no call button — and no privacy.
“There was a light over my face so bright that I couldn’t stand it,” Collazuol said. “The only way I could sleep was I had to put a blanket over my head. People probably thought I was dead.”
Collazuol, who also suffers from severe arthritis in his hips, uses a walker to get around. But in all the hallway confusion, someone moved his walker, which he needed to get to the bathroom.
Without a call button to summon a nurse for help, Collazuol had to scream until he got someone’s attention.
“It’s a horror show,” Collazuol said. “They should be ashamed of themselves for doing that.”
Torres said he has heard all the excuses about the uninsured and the underinsured using the emergency room for standard care. But he said the hospital has had more than enough time to find the space it needs to accommodate its patients.
“Bronx residents are being treated like second-class citizens,” Torres said. “It’s a situation that is unlikely to be tolerated elsewhere.”
The time is now and long overdue for Bronx Montefiore Hospital to make the changes to protect their patients and staff.
NYDN Article: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-metro-nurses-hospital-hallways-20181015-story.html