| Joseph Byrne Tuesday, March 26, 2013 |
With Hurricane Sandy several months in the rearview mirror, there are still essential businesses and services that are struggling to get the doors reopened. One of those place is the Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County. The counties heart, the hospital was forced to shut down operations because of the extensive damage done through the flooding and the other effects of the superstorm.
Besides being the only major medical facility on this barrier island east of New York City, the Long Beach Medical Center was also the city’s largest employer, and the idling of 700 of the hospital’s 1,200-member workforce in the aftermath of Sandy — a natural disaster that destroyed many of those workers’ homes — has been doubly tough on the community.
“We’re getting calls every day from people wanting to know where to go for services,” says CEO Douglas Melzer, who has been affiliated with the hospital for 36 years. He and a small office staff work out of a nearby office building, hopeful they can return to the 160-bed hospital and neighboring nursing home by early April. Melzer says the reopening will likely happen in stages.
“We have a mission to care for this community,” he said. “They’ve been traumatized by this.”
Just before Sandy hit in October, patients in the 162-bed facility were relocated to 12 hospitals under evacuation orders. When the storm struck, a small crew remained in the hospital, including Mark Healey, the hospital’s director of facilities and engineering, who recalled spending several days at the hospital before, during and after the storm.
 |
|
||||
The LIYellowPages.com - Your Local Yellow Page Resource - (631) 306-2000 - Email Us | About Us
Categories | Cities | Career Opportunities | Link To Us | Terms of Service | Privacy | Search | Site Map | Advertise
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2016 by Long Island Yellow Pages™ | Publication by Long Island Media, Inc.
