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Massena Memorial occasionally diverts emergency patients to other hospitals; CEO wants more beds with necessary equipment

Posted 1/23/17

By ANDY GARDNER MASSENA -- Massena Memorial Hospital’s CEO says increased emergency room demand is forcing them to occasionally turn away high-need patients out of safety concerns. “It happens …

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Massena Memorial occasionally diverts emergency patients to other hospitals; CEO wants more beds with necessary equipment

Posted

By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- Massena Memorial Hospital’s CEO says increased emergency room demand is forcing them to occasionally turn away high-need patients out of safety concerns.

“It happens from time to time … if every one of our telemetry beds are occupied,” MMH CEO Bob Wolleben said at the hospital’s Monday Board of Managers meeting. A telemetry bed is equipped to keep an eye on the patient’s heart activity. They can handle seven emergency patients at once, but only five have telemetry monitors.

“Either not enough beds in the house, mostly we don’t have enough telemetry beds. It's something we’re going to rectify this year. We’re going to add some telemetry capability,” Wolleben said. “We are not going to have someone in the hospital and have them be unsafe.

"It’s only for patients with complex medical problems."

He said he is the only one who can decide to divert patients to other hospitals, and it doesn’t happen often.

“If it’s 3 in the morning, I get called. If it’s 3 in the afternoon, I get called. If it’s during church on Sunday, I get called. I’m the only one that can make that decision,” he said. “It happens in all the hospitals."

Town Supervisor Joe Gray, who had asked Wolleben to address the issue after hearing rumors that patients were being turned away, said he was satisfied with how MMH handles the problem.

From the town’s standpoint, that’s good news,” he said. “You’re not putting the hospital and the town at risk by not taking on people you can’t care for.”

MMH saw an uptick in emergency patients in 2016. Wolleben gave a presentation showing they treated 16,124 emergency patients last year, up from 15,935 in 2015.