New York City paid $52 million to build a hospital in a tennis center that only treated 79 coronavirus patients, while other city hospitals were packed, according to The New York Times.
The temporary medical facility, was built in Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, was only open for a month and never served many patients during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. According to documents, doctors working at the hospital received pay rates as high as $732 per hour.
"I basically got paid $2,000 a day to sit on my phone and look at Facebook," Katie Capano, a nurse from Baltimore who worked in the hospital. "We all felt guilty. I felt really ashamed, to be honest."
Jackie Bray, who ran the facility for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said city government officials thought patients would fare better at other hospitals in the area, even those that were overcrowded.
"The alternative space was less used than we expected it to be because we broke the curve, thank goodness," Bray said about the decision to move patients to other city hospitals as coronavirus cases leveled off.
The federal government also set up a temporary hospital at the Javits Center and another onboard the U.S.S. Comfort. Of the 400,000 coronavirus cases treated by NYC hospitals, only 1,400 ever visited the temporary hospitals.
"The conditions in the emergency room during this crisis were unacceptable and dangerous," Tan said. "Knowing what our patients had to endure in an overcrowded emergency department, it's frustrating how few patients were treated at facilities such as Billie Jean King."
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