ALBANY — Albany Medical Center has begun accepting COVID-19 patients from the hard-hit New York City area, as hospitals there struggle to keep up with a surge of infected patients.

Fourteen patients from Jamaica Hospital and Flushing Hospital in Queens were transported via ground and air to Albany late Tuesday night, and taken to the hospital’s medical/surgical and intensive care units, multiple sources confirmed.

Albany Med president and CEO Dennis McKenna and hospital general director Fred Venditti said they were at the hospital when the first transfers started coming in around 9 to 10 p.m. They agreed to take them after receiving a call from the CEO of the Queens hospital system, Venditti said.

“He described for us a situation down there where they needed some help in terms of care of some of the patients they had in their emergency department,” he said. “So we agreed, as we would agree to any transfer of patients into our system, we agreed to take those patients.”

The hospital will take more — from any overburdened hospital in the state — if asked and if beds are available, McKenna said.

“The reason we take those transfers is, No. 1, that is our mission,” he said. “That has always been our mission, and we’re always happy to do that and we know that we can provide the care that’s needed.”

Asked about the transfers Thursday morning, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy said he wasn't receiving updates from the hospital but that "last he heard" the number of New York City transfers had surpassed 40.

As the only level one trauma center, tertiary care center and academic medical center in northeastern New York and western New England, Albany Med has a long history of accepting transfers, McKenna said, and takes in roughly 16,000 a year. In 2015, one in every four patients at Albany Med was a transfer patient, he said.

The hospital is also required under federal law, McKenna said, to accept patients when it gets a call from an emergency department and has capacity.

Bed shortages



The prospect of downstate patients making their way upstate has been on the region’s radar for weeks. On Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirmed that hospitals across the state were working together to formulate plans for when to make transfers, in order to prevent any one hospital from becoming too overloaded.

On Wednesday, he said the state Health Department would coordinate those transfers, and that the strategy in general will be to transfer patients first within a local health system, then among health systems in the same area, and then "worst-case scenario” transfer upstate.

Asked about the Albany Med transfers at his daily news briefing Wednesday, Cuomo described the move as a “one-off situation” based on a pre-existing agreement with the transferring hospitals. Albany Med seemed to rebut this claim Wednesday when it said that prior to Tuesday it had not had any established relationship with the Queens hospitals.

"We were acting with the support of hospital associations and when they called, we did what we always do — accept the transfer patients," spokesman Matt Markham said. "The act of accepting transfers aligns with our mission to care for any patient, regardless of their condition."

Hospitals in New York City, which is now the epicenter of cases nationwide, are quickly becoming overwhelmed. Medical volunteers from across the country are racing to the area to help, and temporary medical facilities have been erected or — in the case of the 1,000-bed USNS Comfort — sailed in to handle overflow.

Still, that may not be enough. Cuomo has said the state will need up to 140,000 hospital beds for the outbreak’s peak, which is expected at the end of the month. The state normally has 53,000 beds, and is expected to hit 93,000 once hospital surge plans are in place and temporary facilities are brought online.

Albany Med said Wednesday that receiving transfers from outside the region will not impact its ability to care for patients locally. Venditti said the hospital has a “great analytics team” that has been working up various surge scenarios to assist the hospital in making future transfer decisions as cases grow locally.

“We can determine, frankly, when it’s safe for us to take patients from outside the region and when perhaps we need to slow that down or even stop it so we maintain capacity for the growth of patients coming out of the region,” he said.

The patients who arrived from New York City Tuesday night are largely assigned to the hospital’s C-2 unit.

Other areas of the hospital are being cleared and converted into negative pressure rooms for a surge of COVID-19 patients, said one nurse who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. The hospital’s South Clinical Campus on Hackett Boulevard is also being cleared, and will at least initially be used for non-infected patients, she said.

Additionally, nurses who don’t normally work bedside are being told they soon will, she said.

The extended use and re-use of personal protective equipment continues to frighten staff, she said, and the arrival of patients from New York City has only compounded that fear.

“The truth is we aren’t just nurses,” she said. “I’m a mom, my parents are immunodeficient. There are people in our communities which we are trying to protect. We need to protect ourselves so we can do our job and help others.”

On Monday, the hospital announced that 45 health care workers across the Albany Med system had tested positive for COVID-19, and another 141 who had been exposed to known cases were being monitored for symptoms.

Other hospitals prepare



Two other large hospital systems in the Capital Region told the Times Union on Wednesday that they intend to take transfers out of New York City if asked.

St. Peter's Health Partners, which operates four hospitals in Albany and Troy, and Ellis Medicine in Schenectady said they have not received any transfers from downstate yet, but that they stand "ready and willing" to accept those patients should the need arise.

"We feel it is our moral duty to help those who are suffering, including our fellow health care workers," said Courtney Weisberg, a spokeswoman for St. Peter's.

"If and when that time comes, we would continue to make our community cases our priority and work to take all necessary precautions, following CDC and public health guidelines to ensure the safety of our patients and colleagues," she added.

Ellis Medicine president and CEO Paul Milton, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Nursing Officer Leslyn Williamson, and Chief Medical Officer David Liebers issued a joint statement on the issue in response to questions from the Times Union.

"Physicians, nurses and staff throughout the Ellis family share a sense of duty and moral obligation to care for all patients who need us, and assist our fellow healthcare workers outside the region,” they wrote.

“We cannot respond to this virus facility-by-facility, but must do so as a broad community,” they said. “This virus does not recognize geographic borders, and as caregivers, we recognize that supporting fellow New Yorkers and Americans fits squarely with our mission."

Hospitals across the Capital Region have been coordinating daily on pandemic response and providing updates on the number of confirmed and suspected cases they are treating each day, as well as how many are in intensive care units and on ventilator support.

As of Tuesday, the number of COVID-19 patients being cared for at about a dozen hospitals across the region had grown to 97, according to Albany Med. On Wednesday, Albany Med reported 39 COVID-19 patients, including 13 in intensive care units and five on ventilators.

Steve Hughes and Brendan Lyons contributed.

Are you working the front lines in the fight against COVID-19 in the Capital Region? The Times Union wants to hear from you. Contact reporter Bethany Bump at bbump@timesunion.com with comments or concerns.