By Phil Corso
Though Hurricane Sandy drifted away from northeast Queens more than one week ago, the consequences of her devastating winds and storm surge still plagued residents throughout the borough, including hundreds of home nurses at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children in Bayside.
According to St. Mary’s, home nurses have experienced serious difficulties getting to the nearly 4,000 patients throughout the city and Long Island, either running out of gas or being stopped at checkpoints and flood barriers as they attempt to reach children in their care.
While the rest of the Northeast tries to return to some sense of normalcy after the storm, St. Mary’s Chief Administrative Officer Hope Illecito said nurses have had trouble maintaining communication with patients and their families. Additionally, gas stations throughout New York and New Jersey have been stricken with long lines and shortages in resources.
“We have a double whammy in that gasoline is scarce and communication is difficult,” said Illecito, who runs the hospital’s community programs. “Our nurses, therapists and clinical field staff are ready to roll in their cars, but they cannot get too far because they cannot access fuel.”
St. Mary’s services roughly 4,000 children daily, Illecito said. But gas shortages have left hundreds of therapists, nurses and home health aides with fewer options in getting around the city, as well as Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties.
Borough President Helen Marshall reiterated Illecito’s claims in a statement Tuesday, requesting for additional fuel supplies at the hospital.
To combat long gas lines and various checkpoints across city bridges in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, St. Mary’s Hospital said staff members have been performing drive-bys, in which workers visit the homes of patients if they have not received adequate communication. The check-ups, Illecito said, have been successful since the storm swept through the city.
Illecito said a handful of St. Mary’s patients decided to refuse mandatory evacuation orders throughout the city’s Zone A regions, which has put a strain on the staff to maintain communication and care.
“We are most concerned about our sickest kids. Some are ventilator-dependant or use high-level equipment,” Illecito said. “We called all of them before the storm, and now we have a special challenge where communication has become more difficult to maintain.”
According to a St. Mary’s spokeswoman, only a small percentage of patients did not evacuate, but they still posed a larger challenge on the staff to provide home care, which she said was the most cost-effective way of looking after the children.
In addition to the difficulties that health care workers have faced in trying to assist St. Mary’s patients, the hospital said employees were still struggling to overcome their own personal storm disasters.
“We have staff here whose situations have been destroyed personally, and they still made their ways into work,” Illecito said. “The work we do here is amazing and the people who work for us are very dedicated.”
Nonetheless, St. Mary’s’ Bayside facility weathered the storm without any serious damage, Illecito said.
“The Bayside campus held up very well, which was wonderful to hear,” Illecito said. “The staff did a fabulous job and pulled together during such an incredible storm to take care of those kids.”
Reach reporter Phil Corso by e-mail at pcorso@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4573.
