CM Aldebol on Jacobi Hospital pediatric radiology equipment failures

Thank you, Dr.

Katz.

Thank you, cheers.

So I have a question about Jacoby Hospitals.

They're all the dedicated pediatric x-ray and fluoroscopy rooms.

I practiced that all morning today.

Good job.

I could never have done that.

At Jacoby are completely out of service.

The primary pediatric x-ray room has been out of order for nearly three years.

And the fluoroscopy unit is now completely offline.

And that's, you know, obviously leaving pediatric patients at both Jacoby and North Central Bronx with zero dedicated pediatric radiology rooms.

And this is obviously a problem.

We need pediatric specific equipment to adhere to pediatric radiation safety protocols, especially for premature babies.

And our office and our Bronx delegation, we've been advocating for these capital fixes to be prioritized in the budget.

However, the urgency and effect on patient care for these needs is

is very high.

Do you have any insight into why this situation has been allowed to get so critical and what plans are in place to prevent harm to patients in the short term?

And what can be done to make these fixes for Jacoby Hospital a priority for H&H?

So just acknowledge that much of our equipment is past what people would say is the useful life.

We are a system that prioritizes services, and sometimes the equipment doesn't make it to the top of the list because we're so busy trying to take care of everybody.

Our overall capital needs are huge and would swamp the city's budget, right?

We have 11 acute care skilled nursing facilities, many of them quite old buildings with leaking roofs and boilers that need to be fixed and chillers, and we try to do our best

to figure out what is the next priority.

Fluoroscopy, thankfully, is not as much of a tool as it was in my generation as a doctor, which I suspect may have been why it didn't get the same level of priority.

But there are certain things you can only do with fluoroscopy.

You can't do it with a CT scan.

I mean, mostly the CT scans have replaced fluoroscopy, which we can't do.

which is good for diagnosis, which is a good thing because less radiation to the kid.

But there are certain procedures that can only be done by fluoroscopy.

My understanding is that they were transferring the kids right now until they got a new fluoroscopy.

I don't know the equipment schedule.

Do you know it, John?

No.

So we will get, I'll go back, I'll call Chris Mastromano.

I feel he told me what the plan is, but I don't remember it at this moment.

Thank you for raising it.

I can sit down with him and figure that out as well.