Residents have been concerned about the designation of Glen Cove Hospital as a temporary Ebola treatment center since the news broke in mid-October. Officials from the North Shore-LIJ Health System held a meeting at Glen Cove Mansion on Wednesday, Oct. 29 to dispel the rumors, clear up facts and give people a chance to have their questions answered.
About 100 people gathered for the discussion, a meeting which required an RSVP and where guests were treated to complimentary hors d’oeuvres and wine.
Dr. David Battinelli, chief medical officer, explained that Glen Cove Hospital is one of eight facilities designated by the governor in New York State as a treatment center for the virus; on Oct. 16, the health system was required to have one facility in Nassau County and one facility in Suffolk prepared for treatment, per governor mandate. All North Shore-LIJ facilities have established isolation areas in the event they receive a suspected Ebola patient, and the health system has recruited a volunteer team of critical care experts and created a temporary treatment unit at Glen Cove Hospital to provide around-the-clock care to any affected patients.
“Every single hospital and healthcare facility has to have the ability and preparedness to accept a patient who might be suspected of having this or any other infectious disease,” said Battinelli. “There are standards in place of how to assess the patient and risk their assessment, and then report to the department of health…only patients with confirmed disease would then be designated to go to one of these sites.”
He stressed that patients within Nassau County might be sent to Glen Cove Hospital or they might be sent somewhere else, possibly even out of state. He noted that confirmed cases of Ebola would not show up as surprise but there would be proper channels and transport to the hospital, and the staff would have fair warning of the patient’s arrival. At this time, the hospital is prepared to accept one patient; in two weeks or so, they will probably have the capability to accept two, according to Battinelli.
“We are not alone in this; we are working daily with the state department of health, the county department of health and the CDC in Atlanta, as well as colleagues in hospitals throughout New York City to be constantly be educated and understand exactly what the best mechanisms are to take care of this is,” Battinelli said.
The entire third floor of the hospital has been converted to the treatment center, having undergone minor renovations to meet the proper requirements. Battinelli said the State Department of Health and the CDC were on site for 10 hours inspecting the facility and consider it to be “state of the art” and a “leading facility.”
A team of nurses and doctors have volunteered to take care of the potential Ebola patient, and Battinelli explained that in the previous 10 days, they had been training “thousands of staff members.” He said all employees on the team will be monitored, and they will have the choice of either going home to their families or staying on site while caring for the patient. However, he said, when the employees finish the total tour of taking care of the patient, they will be isolated and monitored for 21 days.
Several residents raised concern over how the waste would be disposed, and whether it would go into the city’s sewers.
Dr. John D’Angelo, Sr. VP for emergency services, explained that the waste will be packaged in CDC-approved containers, and the fluids will be first absorbed in pads, then placed in medical waste bags. The waste will be treated with bleach prior to going into the bag and outside of bag will also be treated with bleach. A contracted vendor will then take it away to the proper facility.
Additionally, he said that all sinks, toilets and drains will be pretreated with bleach before any fluid goes into sink or drain and gets into the system.
Resident Donald DeRiggi, a former mayor of Glen Cove, asked if there was any resident of Glen Cove on the board who made the decision to have unit in Glen Cove.
Susan Kwiatek, executive director at Glen Cove Hospital, said, “I not only have worked at Glen Cove Hospital for 34 years, but I am also a resident of Glen Cove and when I was approached about having the disease treatment center in Glen Cove, I knew that this was the right place to do it because I knew we had the infrastructure and I knew it could get done quickly and that we would provide the best care, the safest care to protect our patients, our staff and our community.”
Michael Dowling, president and chief executive officer of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, said “We had to be in a situation to be prepared… we identified Glen Cove as the most suitable facility for this…the decision was made so we could take care of people who are very sick.”
DeRiggi responded, “I don’t think the interest of Glen Cove was one of your considerations…I really believe there should be more input from the community. The hospital is supposed to serve the people of the community.”
As a more-permanent solution to improve its preparedness for future infectious disease outbreaks, North Shore-LIJ announced last week it will pursue the development of a biological containment unit, modeled after the University of Nebraska Medicine Biocontainment Patient Care Unit and the Serious Communicable Disease Unit in Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which have played a vital national role in caring for Ebola patients in recent weeks.
The health system published an Ebola Virus Disease Preparedness Manual last week, which can be downloaded as a free resource guide at www.nslijalerts.com.
