Reported last Monday:

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that the NYC Health & Hospital Corp (HHC) Coler Long Term Care Facility on Roosevelt Island will be adding 350 of the 1200 new beds for the treatment of Coronavirus victims…

I asked the Mayor’s Office and Roosevelt Island’s NYC Council Ben Kallos:

How will the Coronavirus beds effect the existing Coler patients who are among the most vulnerable

Today, Council Member Kallos reports that the 350 new beds at Coler Hospital will not be used for Coronavirus patients:

I asked Council Member Kallos:

What does this mean. What are the 350 beds at Roosevelt Island Coler Hospital being used for if not treatment?

Council Member Kallos repled:

The Roosevelt Island Twitterverse chimes in:

How are current conditions at Coler Hospital: Pete Yearwood, a Coler resident and member of the Open Doors arts and justice group reports:

The Coronavirus has an entire nation in its grip. People’s lives have been turned upside down. Everyone is being extra careful of where they go. Schools are closing, businesses, and rightly so because this disease does not discriminate. Some of the people who this is really hard on are people in nursing homes. I am a patient at Coler, which is a rehab and nursing facility located on the north end of Roosevelt Island. And I must say that they’ve stepped up and are doing everything possible to keep patients, staff and the general public safe. Some of of the guidelines may seem a little harsh but it benefits everyone in the end. Some of the things Coler is doing:

  • Only allowing essential personnel into the facility
  • All visiting has been suspended
  • All staff are screened at the security desk before entering the facility
  • Making sure that all staff wear a mask
  • Wiping down hallways and stairwells daily
  • Staff is versed in proper hand hygiene technique

I feel for the patients who are confined to the bed and Dementia patients. This could be mentally stressful for them because at some point they will think their loved ones have given up on them, but I have faith in the staff at Coler they will somehow get them through this. Social workers are working with the patients who are not cognitively able to grasp what’s going on.

I have noticed a complete turn around in the way Colers staff respond to patients since implementing their ICARE (Compassion Accountability Responsibility Excellence) program. Everyone is treated with respect and dignity, young and old. I want to close by saying when things like this happen, it shows how “under the skin” we are all related, so just take care of each other and we will get through this.

Open Doors Project Leader Jennilie Brewster sent this letter to Mayor de Blasio

March 18, 2020

Dear Mayor de Blasio,

At a recent press conference, sharing a plan to increase the number of hospital beds across the city within the next several weeks, you mistakenly stated: the Coler facility on Roosevelt Island, an H+H facility that was empty is being immediately brought back online with 350 beds to care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coler is far from empty. It is an active nursing home and rehabilitation facility, and home to more than 500 people receiving long-term skilled nursing care on Roosevelt Island.

I have the honor of working with Coler residents who are living with paraplegia, largely due to gun violence, in a program called OPEN DOORS. The CDCs primary recommendations to prevent the virus spread are not available to our members who cannot wash their own hands, and are reliant on healthcare workers for basic and pandemic needs.

Also, a substantial number of Coler residents are over 65. And all residents have serious, chronic medical conditions requiring an institutional level of care, and many have lung disease, diabetes, and heart disease that place them at an even higher risk for serious illness and death from COVID-19.

Nursing home residents have been among the first COVID-19 fatalities in the United States. Seattles Kirkland Facility highlights the unique vulnerability faced by people in congregate care facilities.

I understand this is an unprecedented pandemic and immediate action is required, but I respectfully request you reconsider bringing hundreds of COVID-19 patients to Coler. We know that this novel coronavirus is transmitted via droplets and on surfaces. However, a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine published yesterday suggested aerosol spread may be possible. Given how medically vulnerable Colers residents are, we are concerned that treating COVID-19 patients in the same building as Colers long-term residents could result in more cases, morbidity, and mortality.

We demand an immediate response to our concerns as well as explicit information at the city, state, and federal levels as to what protections/interventions are being made to mitigate COVID-19 infection among Coler residents and the medical staff who care for them, many of whom still have no choice but to use public transportation to get there.

UPDATE 3/20: Roosevelt Island’s NY State Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright adds:

The City will create approximately 1,300 hospital beds through the conversion of four buildings into temporary hospital space. These include the NYC Health + Hospitals/ Coler on Roosevelt Island, which will bring an additional 350 beds online by the end of the week.

The Mayor’s Office has advised that patients in need of lower levels of care will move to empty beds at Coler Hospital to free up our frontline hospitals urgently responding to very seriously ill patients infected with the coronavirus. We are monitoring the situation very closely and encourage residents of Roosevelt Island to contact my office with any additional concerns they may have.