Before, during, and after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, the staff at hospitals and healthcare facilities along the East Coast accomplished amazing feats. Despite power outages, patient evacuations, long hours, and concerns about their own families and homes, hospital workers continue to care for patients.
Last week's Nor'easter added snow and cold, aggravating the flooding and power outages in already hard-hit areas of New York and New Jersey.
But in Long Island, NY there was a break in the clouds for the 45,000 employees of North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Literally overnight, NorthShore-LIJ's HR department, in collaboration with its IT and leadership team, built an Employee Emergency Response Center.
Beginning the Friday before the storm, the health system began to plan for how it would deal with heavy patient volumes that might come from other community hospitals and nursing homes. In the HR department, planning for staffing levels began.
"We put a lot of responsibility on our nurses, doctors, ancillary workers—anyone that worked for the organization, like a transporter, we really required a lot of them. We asked them to come in and help their community by providing care to the patients. The patients always came first," says Joseph Cabral, SVP & Chief HR Officer at North Shore-LIJ Health System.
To cover the staffing needs at the system's 16 hospitals, NorthShore-LIJ put workers on 16-hour shifts. Eight-hour sleep breaks at the hospital were scheduled in between work shifts.
Just to manage the expected increase in patient volumes, facilities were staffed at 150 percent. What was never expected was for two large medical centers in New York City to be evacuated. At one of NorthShore-LIJ's hospitals, Lenox Hill, the overall patient volume increased by 100 percent—from 250 to 500 patients.
NorthShore-LIJ health has about 25,000 employees living in the same community the health system serves, so the devastation to the area greatly impacted the staff as well.
Cabral shares the story of one dedicated nurse manager whose home burned down on Breezy Point, the area of Queens where 111 homes were destroyed in a fire.
"She was watching her community burn down to the ground, and minutes later her husband calls her and says, 'Honey, you can't come home, we don't have a house for you to come home to.' I mean you can imagine? Total devastation," says Cabral.
"This is an individual who has made that total commitment to the patient, she's at the hospital making sure the patients are taken care of, meanwhile she has a whole family and all of this devastation to her home to worry about."
"The organization and Michael Dowling, our CEO, really felt that it was time to take care of our employees this time, and step up to the plate to make sure we're providing whatever resources they needed to go on and rebuild. To take care of them as much as we possibly can," says Cabral.
Out of this sentiment, the Emergency Employee Resource Center was built. All employees were notified of the center in a mass communication from Dowling. Employees were given the EERC call center number and direct access to the health system's emergency medical services before the storm hit.
In the first 48 hours of the storm, the EERC relocated 62 families in temporary housing. To date, the EERC has set up a total of 234 employees and family members in temporary housing. Many employees continue to sleep at the hospital until they can return home. Social workers, emergency responders, and HR staff as well as others have been working "fast and furious," to handle the hundreds of calls coming in, Cabral says.
Mary LaPorta, 48, a part-time registered clerk at Northshore-LIJ's Franklin Hospital's admitting department, was one of those employees living in the temporary housing. She, her husband, and her three teenage sons were rescued after three days from their flooded home. NorthShore-LIJ has also taken in LaPorta's friend and her five children, as well as LaPorta's sister and her 19-year-old son, who is disabled and ill.
LaPorta breaks into tears when she tells me about the director of her department at Franklin Hospital, who drove out in the hurricane and back again to deliver medicine to LaPorta's sister for her son until they could be rescued.
"I mean, my sister wasn't even an employee, and I'm part-time. I'm just a clerk, you know, and they went through all of that for us, and for my sister's son," says LaPorta. "I can't say enough good things about what NorthShore-LIJ has done for us."
To streamline the process of addressing the needs of all of their employees and the volume of calls, the EERC's phone lines were triaged by priority:
- Immediate housing
- Food, blankets, clothes
- Financial resources
The health system is giving cash or money cards to families in ranges of $500 -1,000 depending on the number of family members. Its credit union has also arranged to provide 0% interest loans up to $7,500, which are guaranteed by NorthShore-LIJ.
"These are for individuals without financial backing. Maybe these individuals are living in an apartment, where they got flooded and don't have anything, and they are already individuals who are living paycheck-to-paycheck, because this is an expensive place to live in this region," says Cabral.
Despite the storm, the health system's Lenox Hill Autumn gala was held on Monday. It traditionally raises money for the health system's capital projects. But this year, CEO Michael Dowling announced that 75 percent of all of the money raised would go towards helping the employees of the health system rebuild, and 25 percent would be donated to the community rebuilding efforts.
That night, the health system raised $2.3 million dollars. And in the days following, $750,000 in donations has been received from trustees, executives, and employees.
"We believe in our work force. It's part of our culture. One of our tag lines is taking care of our patients begins with taking care of our employees. We had that tag line way before the hurricane. I think that's innate to who we are as an organization," says Cabral.
The ERRC is now averaging 20 requests a day for housing. "This resource center will continue to be open as long as we need it," says Cabral. "The folks who are managing finding placements for people to have homes, those people are here until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. They are so committed, they just don't want to go if they're working with someone, helping someone ... out in the street. We coordinate our security folks to go and pick them up and put them in temporary housing. Our whole organization is really embracing this and coming together."
"I think this is a lesson-learned for the other HR executives, what kinds of plans do they have in place to prepare for the aftermath of such catastrophic events on their own work force? That's the thing in healthcare—we worry about the community, our patients, and everybody else. But often times we neglect to make sure our employees are okay."
Chelsea Rice is an associate editor for HealthLeaders Media.
