NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull evacuates patients, shuts down following extreme rain

Following extreme rainfall seen across the city starting September 29, New York City Health and Hospitals/Woodhull evacuated all 116 of its patients and fully shut down its power on October 1 to address flood damage, the municipal system announced this week.

All patients were transferred to other NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H) locations with no adverse events reported, according to the Brooklyn hospital. H+H/Woodhull will shut down for a “minimum of several days” while workers assess the extent of any possible damage and conduct repairs, according to a statement. In the meantime, the facility will not accept patients and will divert ambulances to other locations.

“This could not have been accomplished without the work of the committed NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull staff, all the health system’s teams, and our government agency partners,” Gregory Calliste, the hospital’s CEO, said in the statement. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we’ll be a stronger hospital because of it.”

H+H spokesperson Christopher Miller told Healthcare Brew that the hospital used its experience from the Covid-19 pandemic to improve the protocol for transferring patients. “We learned a lot from our ‘level loading’ experience during the pandemic, which we were able to apply through this weekend’s evacuation. Patient safety—not speed—was always our priority here,” Miller said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams added in a statement that “with climate change making these storms more intense and more frequent, it’s more important than ever that we get the federal resources we need to continue to build new infrastructure that can handle these threats.”

H+H has initiated 30 climate resiliency projects in response to 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, Healthcare Brew previously reported. In May, the health system opened a climate-resilient hospital, which has a storm-resilient design that specifically addresses flooding.

“Our goal was to never be in that position again, where we would have to shutter the doors and leave and not have a good time frame to come back because of all the damage,” Dan Collins, facilities manager for South Brooklyn Health, previously told Healthcare Brew. “We looked at it from a point of view of, how do you protect the hospital building and how do you protect the campus?”