Forest Hills Hospital Reportedly Still Full; Could Cut Surgeries

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Some patients awaiting non-emergency surgeries at a Forest Hills hospital are still at risk of having their procedures cut next week, according to a new report.

Bloomberg named Long Island Jewish Forest Hills as among 56 hospitals in the state that had a bed capacity of 10 percent or less on Thursday, meaning the hospital might need to postpone elective surgeries next week under a recent executive order issued by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Last week, amid a statewide uptick in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, Hochul urged New Yorkers to get vaccinated and pledged to increase hospital bed capacity at burdened state facilities — defined as hospitals that have 10 percent or less of staffed bed capacity remaining — by postponing elective surgeries from Dec. 3rd through Jan. 15th.

LIJ Forest Hills was among the only NYC hospitals named on a state list of bed-limited, short-staffed hospitals released on Wednesday. As of Thursday that list had reportedly grown to include Mount Sinai in Manhattan, where nurses protested shortages this week.

A representative from Northwell Health, which operates LIJ Forest Hills, however, told Patch on Wednesday that the hospital resolved its capacity issues. The spokesperson did not immediately respond on Friday.

Burdened hospitals, however, won't officially have to limit surgeries until next week, according to newly released guidelines, which also specify some urgent surgeries that are still permitted under the order, like neurosurgery and cancer surgery.

"We will get through this," Hochul said on Friday, after the first cases of the omicron COVID-19 variant were confirmed in New York.

Since the omicron variant is possibly more transmissible, Mayor Bill de Blasio said earlier this week that he is concerned about hospital capacity, but is prepared to support healthcare workers.

"Overwhelmingly our hospitals are doing very well, but we have a history of supporting them during very tough times in 2020, so we know how to do that," he said.

The hospital crisis in Queens

In Queens, however, reports of hospital bed shortages highlight an issue that predates the pandemic: Queens is the most underserved per-capita in terms of hospital beds among the city's five boroughs.

There's only 1.5 hospital beds per 1,000 residents in the World's Borough, compared to Manhattan where there are 6.4 beds per 1,000 residents, one study published in June 2020 found.

Council Member-elect Lynn Schulman is gearing up to address that issue. "

I ran for City Council to fix this problem," she told Patch, adding that the "dangerous" lack of hospital capacity in Queens exacerbated the effects of the pandemic in the borough; a concern that she still has as neighborhood hospitals being to fill up again.

"It is an urgent matter of life and death and we must focus on this as a top priority," she said.