On Friday and Saturday, New York City shifted thousands of patients out of low-lying hospitals and nursing homes in the projected path of the hurricane. The goal was to avoid a situation like the one after Hurricane Katrina, when vulnerable patients suffered or died after institutions in New Orleans lost power and evacuations took days. Prestorm evacuations, however, came with their own risks, and difficulties were apparent over the weekend at hospitals and shelters. Eventually, the Promenade residents were accepted at the armory. "When you looked out, all you could see were ambulances," said Joseph Williams, MD, director of primary care at Kings County Hospital Center, which had sent medical staff members to the armory. "After some heated discussion with the ambulance manager, the decision was made to keep the patients and not put them at risk." Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn took in more than 100 evacuees starting on Friday. Some arrived in carefully planned transfers, and others were unexpected arrivals, according to Maimonides administrators. At one point on Saturday, patients were lined up on gurneys from the emergency room to the street, said John Marshall, MD, the center's chairman of emergency medicine. Staff members moved patients into a former intensive-care unit, now empty, to evaluate them. "Virtual beds" were created in the hospital's computer system to allow some patients to be moved into hallways to ease the strain on the emergency room.
