Long Beach Medical Center to Reopen in Stages in April

Of the area hospitals that Hurricane Sandy rendered inoperable, Long Beach Medical Center is the only one that remains closed. Bellevue Hospital re-opened in February; NYU Medical Center last December. Coney Island Hospital has started to reopen.

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While plans were to reopen late this month, Long Beach’s 160-bed hospital will likely open in stages, hopefully starting in early April, CEO Douglas Melzer told the Associated Press.

LBMC sustained $56 million in damages from the storm, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to cover most of the repairs that include elevating hospital’s boiler plant and electrical distribution systems above the flood plain, along with such departments as the pharmacy, purchasing-stock room and communications. Workers will also flood-proof parts of building that lines Reynolds Channel on the north end of the beachtown.

Long Beach ambulances must travel about seven miles north to the nearest hospital, South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, where an average of 380 Long Beach residents have used the emergency room since the storm, an increase from an average of 180 residents over the first ten months of 2012, according to Mark Bogen, the hospital’s chief financial officer.

About restoring LBMC as soon as possible, Meltzer said:
"We have a mission to care for this community. They've been traumatized by this."
With a 1,200-member staff, LBMC is the city’s largest employer, and most of the 700 people the hospital was forced to lay off due to the storm live in Long Beach. Many of them have homes that were damaged by Sandy. AP reports that the December unemployment rate for Long Beach jumped from 6.9 percent in 2011 to 10.9 percent in 2012, most of which city officials attribute to the loss of hospital employees.

In January, patients returned to the hospital’s adjacent 200-bed nursing home, the Kominoff Center, after its ground floor was flooded during the storm.

LBMC created a Facebook page to provide updates on the facility’s post-Sandy restoration efforts. About the AP’s March 23 article about the hospital, a post on the page reads: The article reaffirms Long Beach Medical Center's importance to the community; so please feel free to forward it to anyone you think may be interested.”

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