Jacqueline Moran, the director of Northwell’s Centralized Transfer Center, said the hospital can dial up its approach to move patients in response to emergencies, for example in the case a facility must be evacuated because of a fire or a flood.
“Thanks to COVID, the silver lining is now we know how to move this seamlessly from a high incident to a low incident on a daily basis,” Moran said.
Last March, two Northwell hospitals in the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, Long Island Jewish Valley Stream and Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, were overwhelmed with patients.
Northwell Health operates its own ambulances and emergency call center, so they moved dozens of patients each day into other parts of the health network that were not overloaded with coronavirus patients.