Rumor has it, Lenox Hill Hospital is CLOSING

imfunny · Nov 15, 2008

You know I've been hearing the same thing. I have a friend that works there and her floor recently closed. What's the story?

LisaTheNurse · Nov 15, 2008

The rumors might very well be true. I work at Lenox Hill on 3 Wollman and they just closed my unit 2 days ago. I showed up to work my regular night shift and found my entire unit empty with no patients, medcarts or anything and had to report to another floor as a float.

To think, I let go of a job offer at Sloan Kettering to work at a fancy Park Avenue hospital only to find myself floating around with my personals in hand trying to fend on another unit.

I cried the entire night..

girls1 · Nov 16, 2008

That's funny because I went to a job fair on election day and they had a table open. Their table had the longest line too. Apparently everyone was excited about their offering salary.

I hope everyone who's there now starts looking for work before they actually shut down. Best of luck to them all.

nurse2btracy · Nov 16, 2008

OMG - I am not a nurse but have had surgery there and spent alot of time there in early 2002.

If this rumor is true, I am so sorry for anybody who is currently working there. I find it so hard to believe that such a big hospital can just shut down.

Tracy

dreamon · Nov 16, 2008

I can't believe they would shut down and not tell their employees? How could they do that? Do they give severence pay or just leave everyone to go on unemployment until they get another job?

I can't imagine what it must be like to go through this before Christmas- scrambling to find jobs as a new year begins.

LisaTheNurse · Nov 17, 2008

That's funny because I went to a job fair on election day and they had a table open. Their table had the longest line too. Apparently everyone was excited about their offering salary.
I hope everyone who's there now starts looking for work before they actually shut down. Best of luck to them all.

They always send out someone to open up a stand/table at those job fairs, but it's really to save face and to make other hospitals believe that they are still in the running. Truth of the matter is that they are in a financial rut and are in serious need or reorganization. The management has been terrible over the last 5 years or so and people have slowly stopped going to Lenox Hill and have instead opted for the "better" counterpart Cornell Presbyterian.

I don't know what to do.. :cry:

LisaTheNurse · Nov 17, 2008

I can't believe they would shut down and not tell their employees? How could they do that? Do they give severence pay or just leave everyone to go on unemployment until they get another job?
I can't imagine what it must be like to go through this before Christmas- scrambling to find jobs as a new year begins.

Well, the way it works at Lenox is that they just don't shut down the entire hospital, but instead start off by shutting down units. You will first see one unit shut down from one day to the other and then, a few months later, another unit will be forced to shut down, followed by another unit a few months later.

The reason why not too many nurses come in the open and talk about it is because instead of just laying them off, the way most hospitals would, the hospital places them into a floating pool, where they essentially have to just show up day-to-day and hope that there is a floor/unit in need. Worse case scenario, if there is not a need for them, the hospital then pushes them to use up a vacation day or even a sick day. If someone were to use up all of their sick days, they will just not get paid and have to wait for the patient census to grow again in order to have some work.

After a few months, if they are lucky and financially stable, they will begin to reopen units and allow for the floaters to reintegrate themselves into their old units. This process is perpetual and due to the time and effort these poor nurses have to put into just making ends meet, they probably never get around to talking about it to other nurses or even mentioning it on some broader medium the likes of this forum.

It's sad really, what's worse is that we have a useless union that only sits around collecting dues and doing nothing for their nurses.

mochanurse2be · Nov 17, 2008

Which union is that?

Nurse212 · Nov 21, 2008

Well, the way it works at Lenox is that they just don't shut down the entire hospital, but instead start off by shutting down units. You will first see one unit shut down from one day to the other and then, a few months later, another unit will be forced to shut down, followed by another unit a few months later.
The reason why not too many nurses come in the open and talk about it is because instead of just laying them off, the way most hospitals would, the hospital places them into a floating pool, where they essentially have to just show up day-to-day and hope that there is a floor/unit in need. Worse case scenario, if there is not a need for them, the hospital then pushes them to use up a vacation day or even a sick day. If someone were to use up all of their sick days, they will just not get paid and have to wait for the patient census to grow again in order to have some work.
After a few months, if they are lucky and financially stable, they will begin to reopen units and allow for the floaters to reintegrate themselves into their old units. This process is perpetual and due to the time and effort these poor nurses have to put into just making ends meet, they probably never get around to talking about it to other nurses or even mentioning it on some broader medium the likes of this forum.
It's sad really, what's worse is that we have a useless union that only sits around collecting dues and doing nothing for their nurses.

That's pathetic. So what's with all the talk of them being a Park Avenue hospital with all the luxuries of a top private institution?

212

LisaTheNurse · Nov 25, 2008

That's pathetic. So what's with all the talk of them being a Park Avenue hospital with all the luxuries of a top private institution?
212

We don't have the luxuries you speak of.

I do Per Diem work for HHC hospitals and I can tell you truthfully that the HHC hospitals have the exact accommodations that we offer at Lenox Hill in my honest opinion. The rooms are pretty much identical. If anything, the HHC hospitals are far more advanced than we are. At the HHC's, they use electrical Blood Pressure Cuffs as opposed to the manual ones. At the HHC, they have gone completely paperless, for instance, all of their notes are done on the computer with a simple click for each entry, no need to type anything in. They don't have to transcribe any medications onto medsheets or even deal with a cardex. What's worse, the HHC has Patient Care Technicians that do your Vitals, Glucose Readings and provide the patients with their Hygienic needs.

At Lenox, we have to deal with manual blood pressure cuffs that tend to be very innacurate once they get decalibrated. We have to deal with everything on paper. All of our notes are on paper, every single medication that is ordered we transcribe onto paper. All of the patient's information, databases and what not, have to be on paper. Some might say that it can't be that bad, but imagine if a doctor is going through a brain fart and decides to order some med for a patient and then 5 minutes later realizes that there might be a better option and discontinues the old medication for the new and then further along realizes that the attending prefers the patient to be on yet another med all together, well all these changes of minds between them can be traced by way of our entries onto med sheets. Every single order that these brainiacs decide to put in and remove and reenter and remove and change etc. has to be copied by hand by us nurses over and over again. We lose so much time trying to keep up with the orders they place in the system, it's sad really. To top that, as if that wasn't the pinnacle issue at hand, we have Certified Nursing Assistants that do nothing but hide when needed or take their breaks right at the point when the patients and nurses need them the most. You would think that this is an issue that the management could resolve, but since the CNA's have a great union, they get away with everything and still get paid for just hanging around chatting on their cell phones and eating left over meal trays that the patients don't want to eat.

I've been at Lenox Hill for a very long time now and prior to arriving there, I was offered a position at Mount Sinai, but due to all the propaganda that you would hear around the world of hospitals of how Lenox Hill is top notch and how great a Park Avenue hospital is, I took the job at Lenox Hill instead. Little did I know how much of a letdown it truly was.

:cry:

**LibraSunCNM, BSN, MSN, CNM** · Nov 25, 2008

I have to agree with the above post. I was a student nurse extern at Lenox Hill, and couldn't believe the floor I was put on after hearing all of their stories during orientation about how great their hospital was. The manual BPs, aides that don't do s***, paper charting, and more were all huge time wasters when the nurses already had EIGHT patients. On day shift. I learned a lot and worked with some awesome nurses, so I'll always be grateful for the experience, but overall I was not impressed with Lenox Hill and chose to go elsewhere for my first job as an RN.