By Yehudit Garmaise

     Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly requested, as the hospitalization rates of COVID patients continue to climb, that all New York state hospitals create plans to ensure that no one hospital is overwhelmed with patients who are sick with the coronavirus.

    As of part of New York City’s plans to ensure that all COVID patients who need hospital beds will have them, Mitchell H. Katz, MD, the CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, has suspended all elective surgeries in the city, as of Tuesday, he explained this morning at the press conference of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

   “We have made it clear that the only surgeries that we will be doing are those surgeries that are a result of emergencies, such as car accidents or surgeries in which a patients’s health is directly affected,” explained Dr. Katz, who, by way of example said that such a surgery would be necessary when a patient develops infection secondary to gall stones, which would require the removal of a patient’s gall bladder.

   “So we are doing the necessary surgeries and the emergency surgeries,” Dr. Katz said, “but we have, consistent with the governor’s request, cancelled elective procedures.”

    Another step that Dr. Katz has taken to maintain an adequate number of available hospital beds is to always ensure that 25% of beds are always left open, as required by Gov. Cuomo.

    Dr. Katz explained that NYC Health + Hospitals are not in imminent danger of using the empty beds because the public hospitals in the city, he said, currently have only 65% occupancy in both intensive care units and in regular medical surgical beds. 

   “So one-third more patients than the patients that we already have would easily fit in our hospitals without opening any extraordinary spaces,” Dr. Katz said.

   To further ensure adequate hospital beds and evenly distribute COVID patients so that no one hospital becomes overcrowded, Gov. Cuomo has also facilitated hospitals’ ability to more easily transfer patients among public hospitals, and between private and public hospitals. Gov. Cuomo has also mentioned the possibility of creating field hospitals, like those used by the military and which are temporary healthcare facilities set up, sometimes outside, during emergency situations.