Transcription
Michael Prilutsky, President and CEO, Jersey City Medical Center
It is my great honor today – my pleasure – to give you an update on what’s going on with the Jersey City Medical Center. First of all, as you’ve seen the headlines, we are over the COVID surge. It’s behind us now. And I would like to say that the staff here at the medical center has done an outstanding job of taking care of the county during the crisis, the pandemic, but it’s behind us.
From environmental services workers, to security staff, to pharmacists – of course our nurses and physicians have all done a great, great job of taking care of you.
I would like to thank the community as well – you listening and watching this – to do what you were supposed to do to help us out the deal with this pandemic. You practiced social distancing, you stayed at home, you washed your hands, you wore a mask – made our job that much easier. But, we’re past that surge now, and I would ike to say that we’re open for business. We’re open for all services that you delayed, fearing this pandemic, and listening to the Department of Health and staying home. So please come back. We’ve made adjustments, we’ve made changes, and we’re ready for you to provide safe, quality care that we always do.
It’s worth mentioning that during this pandemic, as much as we dealt with hundreds and hundreds of COVID patients, at the same time, both of our emergency rooms stayed open. Our maternity services stayed open. And we also, at the same time, took care of hundreds of non COVID patients who safely went home to their loved ones.
So, all that continues as we speak, except all our services are fully open. You’ll notice when you come to our facilities that we’ll ask you some screening questions. We will measure your temperature. We’ll also changed appointments and spread them out so there’s no crowding in the waiting area. We removed waiting room furniture so you have at least six feet of separation. We made some construction adjustments to our administrative areas to our registration desks to provide extra protection. You will see that Plexi glass between you and our administrative staff.
Our physicians are ready for you, our testing and procedural services are ready for you. We’re open and we’re ready to go.
We will provide you COVID testing as well before your procedures to make sure that you pose no danger to yourself or to others. But at the end of the day, as much as we really dealt with this pandemic in a great, great way, we’re truly open for business to take care of this county, and of you, and you should not delay your health care services anymore.
We continue to provide all the services, and in fact, behind me you can see that we continue to invest in this county, invest in this campus with a construction project that we’ve been talking about as our emergency room and our operating rooms continues.
To be clear, when you come to our facility you’ll notice a difference. We’ll give you a mask. We’ll measure your temperature, we’ll ask you some questions, we’ll ask you to practice social distancing inside the hospital as well, in our waiting areas, as well as our procedure areas.
You’ve taken every precaution. So have we. Welcome back.