Samaritan’s Purse, in Collaboration with Mount Sinai Health System, Opens Emergency Field Hospital in New York’s Central Park in Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic
International Christian Relief Organization Responds at Epicenter in U.S. and Italy
Click here for video assets of the field hospital.
Samaritan’s Purse has opened an emergency field hospital today in Central Park adjacent to The Mount Sinai Hospital, the main hospital of the Mount Sinai Health System to provide additional specialized care for victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. With nearly half of all U.S. cases occurring in New York City, the hospitals are overrun and in desperate need of added capacity.
Samaritan’s Purse worked closely with the Mount Sinai Health System, city and state officials as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to deploy a 68-bed Emergency Field Hospital to help meet the needs of local hospitals that are facing an unprecedented wave of sick patients.
“Samaritan’s Purse has been asked to help in New York as the state and their medical infrastructure have been overwhelmed by the conoravirus,” said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse. “We are grateful to be working alongside the Mount Sinai Health System to help meet this critical need. In a time of crisis, we all have to come together to help people who are suffering. Samaritan’s Purse is responding in Jesus’ Name—please pray for everyone affected by this deadly virus.”
The Central Park Emergency Field Hospital is opening less than two weeks after an identical unit was established in Italy. The New York City location will be staffed by 76 disaster response specialists, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, lab technicians, and other critical support personnel.
“In order to meet the needs of the coming surge, we must work as a united front in order save as many lives as possible. We are grateful for the collaboration with Samaritan’s Purse who have come to the aid of the people of Italy and now New York. Through this partnership, we are leveraging our collective resources to care for our patients and community.” said Margaret Pastuszko, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System.
“As part of its broader COVID-19 response, we have activated surge planning to expand our capacity to care for patients with COVID-19. As a system, we’re changing our policies as needed and in real-time, freeing up physical space to expand capacity to serve COVID-19-positive patients, and freeing up staff and resources to manage this crisis however we can. We are doing everything we can do to mitigate this crisis, and taking extraordinary steps to protect and serve our communities, including erecting triage tents outside of emergency departments throughout our eight hospital system to expand services in addition to the mobile tent hospital made possible by our partners at Samaritan’s Purse. These measured are critical, along with the collaboration of our city and state governmental partners and with Samaritan’s Purse, will ensure we get through this pandemic together,” said Jeremy Boal, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer for the Mount Sinai Health System.
“I am very proud of the life-saving work we have done thus far. We are working diligently, around the clock, to prepare for the increase in patients. The partnership with Samaritan’s Purse will allow us to expand inpatient and critical care capacity to meet this growing need. We thank them and our governmental partners for joining us in this fight to stop this pandemic,” said Brendan Carr, MD, Chair of Emergency Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Mount Sinai Health System.
Samaritan’s Purse welcomes the opportunity to work with the Mount Sinai Health System, which will transfer patients within its System to the field hospital. The 68-bed unit, was delivered to New York by a convoy of trucks from the Samaritan’s Purse warehouse in North Carolina.
In recent years, similar field hospitals have been deployed to the Bahamas, Mozambique, Ecuador, and Iraq to help victims of disasters and wars, but this is the first time two hospitals have been deployed simultaneously.
Based in Boone, North Carolina, Samaritan's Purse works in more than 100 countries and responds to the physical and spiritual needs of individuals in crisis situations—especially in locations where few others are working. Samaritan’s Purse specializes in helping victims of disaster, disaster, poverty, famine, and war. For more information, visit SamaritansPurse.org.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.
Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals, receiving high "Honor Roll" status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties.
For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.