Twitter Thread: Occupancy Data for New York's Covid "Epicenter" Hospital Contradicts Perception
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Twitter Thread: Occupancy Data for New York's Covid "Epicenter" Hospital Contradicts Perception
Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens was not bursting at the seams with patients in spring 2020, per data from the agency that operates the hospital.
Earlier this week, I posted a thread with data I received from New York City Health + Hospitals for Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens that contradict impressions given about how full the hospital was during the initial weeks of stay-home orders.
Elmhurst is a public hospital, repeatedly characterized as New York’s covid-19 “epicenter.” It was elevated by President Trump in a March 31, 2020 press conference and the subject Erin Marie Olzsweski’s book Undercover Epicenter Nurse and video about working as a travel nurse in New York.
I requested Elmhurst’s occupancy and emergency department (ED) visit data from NYC H+H in January because other data sources for Elmhurst - namely, those published by the Health Department of New York [State] and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services - are incomplete for the period of interest, show signs of “data dumping,” and do not include data prior to 2020.
My interest lies in corroborating media and other reports that gave New Yorkers and Americans the impression that Elmhurst was experiencing unprecedented patient volumes due to sudden, explosive “spread” of a novel respiratory virus.
You can see my correspondence with NYC H+H in the thread. The occupancy and quarterly emergency department visit data they sent me are pasted below. (Note: Although I asked for daily bed occupancy from 1/1/2016 - 12/31/2020, the data I received begins 4/1/2016. I did not ask H+H why they left out 1/1/16 - 3/31/16.)
Twitter Thread: Occupancy Data for New York's Covid "Epicenter" Hospital Contradicts Perception
Unbelievable deceit on every level.
If you open the Excel file and do a simple sort, it'll become very clear (even more clear than the quarterly summaries indicate) that the lowest daily occupancy numbers, for both non-ICU and ICU beds, occurred in 2020.