Think about this for a moment... Do you have any idea what's involved in transferring a single ICU patient to the Operating Room right down the hall?! To move them several blocks to an entirely different hospital is a staggering challenge. To do so for several dozen critically ill patients boggles the imagination. Everything from patient identification, medical records, insurance, etc., to the liability of making a transfer that is unnecessary for that specific patient's welfare, to the logistics of having enough ambulances, doctors, nurses, and paramedics. The legal issues of having doctors and nurses from one hospital involved in caring for the patient, even for a minute, inside another hospital.
There has to be a huge reason for this step to be taken, beyond the mere preparation for the possibility that they'll need the ICU beds at Bellevue. There's something they're not telling us.
Could stuff...exactly!
Agree; as presented in this article, the hospital's action doesn't pass the smell test. They are actually risking the health care of some patients with a move like this. I even wonder if this would effect someone's insurance coverage, in or out of network for instance.
All as you say and in crowded mid-town Manhattan.
Two adult patients were first moved over the weekend and another two pediatric patients will be moved Monday, according to a joint statement from NYU Langone and Bellevue. Oct. 27, 2014 4:44 p.m. ET
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The child, 5, had a high fever when an Emergency Medical Service ambulance crew rushed him from his Bronx home to Bellevue Hospital about 9 p.m. Sunday. A source said the boy had recently been in Guinea, West Africa, but had not displayed any symptoms after going through a check at Kennedy Airport on Saturday. At Public School 195-196, where the boy attends kindergarten, city Department of Health workers were passing out 'Understanding Ebola' leaflets to assuage fears of students and their parents.Mayor de Blasio urged calm and said the boy was at Bellevue Hospital with his mother, who sources said is 40.
“The child at first did not appear to have any symptoms,” the mayor said. “The fact that the mother shows no symptoms at all is a very encouraging sign.”
The boy had been visiting relatives in Guinea for a month with his family and returned home on Moroccan Airlines early Saturday, landing at Kennedy Airport, sources said.
When he was rushed to Bellevue on Sunday evening, he had a temperature of 102.7 degrees and bloodshot eyes, the sources said. The boy is in an isolation ward at Bellevue Hospital — the epicenter of the city’s response to the Ebola crisis.
Officials have also quarantined the boy’s 52-year-old father, a sister, who is 15, and two brothers, ages 13 and 2, sources said.
“As a further precaution,” a team of so-called “disease detectives” are now tracing all of the young boy’s contacts “to identify anyone who may be at potential risk,” an official said.
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I wonder if the parents did not cancel their trip to West Africa because they would forfeit some of their long planned investment on the deal.
If so, this needs to be addressed now!
Just because the US govt. doesn't prevent unnecessary travel to the hot zone, SHOULD NOT INADVERTENTLY imply the "all clear" for travel anywhere near the Ebola hot zone to the low information traveler/voter. This IS a matter of life or death!
University and Bellevue are affiliated. I always think of them as the same hospital although housed in different buildings.
Maybe because patients don’t want to be in an “Ebola” hospital?
Have you heard that after Duncan died, Texas Presbyterian became like a ghost town, and many patients cancelled elective surgery?
Or perhaps it is the hospital’s liability insurer who has requested these changes.
Bingo! This is an enormous undertaking- costly in terms of patient safety and money. There is more to this story.
Bellevue is also the primary teaching hospital of the New York University School of Medicine and an integral component of the NYU Langone Medical Center Residency Programs. New York University faculty began conducting clinical instruction at Bellevue in 1847. In 1968 NYU School of Medicine assumed complete responsibility for Bellevue's clinical services.