Hospitals seeing more ill patients — but not for COVID-19
Doctors say virus fears could be cause of people delaying care
Dr. Shaline Rao, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola, says she's seen a larger share of her patients die than typical. "I thought they had potential to stabilize or even recover, but they didn't come in and they didn't follow up as I had hoped," she said. Credit: Howard Schnapp
Hospitals in the region are concerned that sicker patients and an expected increase in COVID-19 and flu cases as the weather gets colder could strain the health care system, said Wendy Darwell, president and CEO of Hauppauge-based Suburban Hospital Alliance of New York State.
That could lead to longer waits for inpatient rooms, emergency room care and transfers among hospitals, Darwell said.
"Our patients now are sicker than our patients used to be," said Dr. Richard Schwarz, medical director of Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, which in the past two months has regularly been over capacity.
Hospitals statewide are seeing a higher-than-usual number of patients in inpatient beds and in emergency rooms, said Bea Grause, president of the Healthcare Association of New York State, which represents nonprofit hospitals and health care organizations. There's no data to document how much of the increase is due to people who put off care, but Grause said in an email that it is "reasonable to connect pandemic-related delays to at least some of the current influx."
Studies from the early months of the pandemic, when fear of the coronavirus and avoidance of medical care was highest, showed the apparent impact of people forgoing care.
Read more in this story by Newsday's David Olson about the trend at local hospitals.
Plus: More than 70% of Long Islanders are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to state statistics released Sunday.
The chart below is a glimpse of vaccination rates broken down by community. Search that chart and view a map of new cases and other charts on our data page.
Vaccination rates in communities across Long Island, with data as of Thursday.
See more coronavirus headlines below.
Erin Serpico is an assistant web producer who joined Newsday in November 2018. Originally from New Jersey, she now covers community events and produces local content for newsday.com while also helping run the homepage.
