LBMC Trustee Speaks Out on Lack of 911 Emergency Room

Ray Ellmer, a member of the Board of Trustees at Long Beach Medical Center, is speaking out about the city’s ongoing lack of an emergency department that accepts 911 ambulances since the state’s Department of Health decided to keep the barrier island’s lone hospital closed after Hurricane Sandy.

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At last week’s City Council meeting, Ellmer addressed the need for the state to allow such an emergency department to open in Long Beach while city firefighters are busy transporting patients to South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside, which is roughly a five-mile or 15-minute drive away.  

“What we are seeing in Long Beach is that children and adults are dying in ambulances, or shortly dying thereafter in emergency rooms, because of the time it takes to get residents from our community, which includes Atlantic Beach, Point Lookout — our barrier island has over 60,000 residents — it takes too much time to go to South Nassau,” said Ellmer, who is also a Long Beach firefighter.

Following the Nov. 19 council meeting, Ellmer told Patch of four instances in or near Long Beach last summer in which people suffered serious injuries or medical problems that cost them their lives or nearly did, including a child with medical problems who died at South Nassau and a man who suffered a heart attack while playing volleyball on the beach who also died there.

LBMC, a 162-bed hospital, sustained $56 million in damages during Hurricane Sandy, and although work to repair the hospital, including the emergency department, was completed in June, the state has kept the facility closed and called on it to declare bankruptcy and merge with South Nassau. Since then, LBMC has been in negotiations with South Nassau about a pending merger. In October, a $6.6 million federal grant was given to South Nassau to rebuild on the LBMC campus an urgent care center, but one that would not accept 911 ambulances. The opening of the facility is pending.    

“ … The longer this takes, the Department of Health is going to have Long Beach blood on its hands,” Ellmer told the council.

While Ellmer said he and his fellow LBMC’s board trustees are under a non-disclosure agreement about the negotiations and pending merger, they have advised the city council and fire department about this ongoing process. But Ellmer said he still feels the responsibility to speak out and let residents know what is happening.

He said resident more than 15,000 Long Beach residents signed a petition calling for a 911 emergency room that was directed to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah. In October, Council President Scott Mandel wrote a letter to the state, urging the immediate opening of the urgent care center, as well as another department: “[W]e are asking that you also expedite the transition to a fully functioning 911 Emergency Response Center to which our ambulances can transport, thereby removing the need to cross bridges and transport patients outside the city.”

Calling the proposed urgent care center “essentially a glamorized doctor’s office” that can’t accept 911 ambulances, Ellmer told Patch the facility was supposed to open this month and that it may not open until early next year. “Quite frankly, nobody knows a date; it’s really up to the state and South Nassau,” said Ellmer, adding that LBMC also expects to have a 911 emergency room by next summer.

At last week’s council meeting, Ellmer called for a heliport system in Long Beach, in which helicopters would just transport seriously ill or injured patients not only to South Nassau, but also to other top hospitals, including Long Island Jewish, St. Francis and Cornell Medical Center.

“I believe there should be a heliport in Long Beach for very serious situations to get people over to South Nassau more quickly,” he said.  

Ellmer called this system the future of transportation to larger hospitals as more urgent care centers have replaced smaller hospitals throughout the state, although he said he was unsure exactly how it would be financed statewide.

Meanwhile, LBMC’s board recently met with the state and South Nassau officials, and Ellmer said he and his fellow trustees believe they have no power over the Department of Health. “I mean, we’re being dictated to here,” he said.

A spokesman for the Department of Health told Patch last week that he would respond to some of Ellmer’s charges and proposals but has yet to offer any comment.  

In June, the state cited as reasons for keeping LBMC closed its loss of more than $2 million per year since 2008 and that its lacked of a sustainable healthcare business model and plan to meet community needs. Ellmer said that though LBMC wanted to reopen after Sandy, the hospital didn’t have enough money to reopen, and that South Nassau was not willing to take on its debt.

“We’re going through the process to have the debt forgiven and it will be gone, but it could take another six months for that to be accomplished,” Ellmer said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency presently plans to reimburse LBMC about $53 million for Sandy-related damages, Ellmer said, but the medical center believes those costs are closer to $145 million.

“In reality, there will probably be a settlement within the next six months for about $100 million,” he added. “And that’s the only reason South Nassau would take over the medical center. That’s the big carrot.”

Ellmer said LBMC expects South Nassau would use at least a good portion of the FEMA funds to reinvest it in Long Beach, possibly to invest in labs at the emergency department or to open additional departments, such as for dialysis.

He said that while a freestanding emergency department in Long Beach would need the support of a number of hospital beds for longer-term stays to be profitable, South Nassau wants a better rate on Medicaid reimbursements to operate only an emergency department in Long Beach, in order to offset the lack of hospital beds. “It really comes down to dollars and cents because Medicaid is such a drain,” he said.

Ellmer said the closing of LBMC and similar smaller hospitals across the state “is a designed plan to shut them down because in poorer areas people used the emergency rooms like they were their doctors’ offices and the state has to pay for their Medicaid, and it’s a way for the state to cut down on expenses.”