Deluxe executive suites dubbed the “Beyonce room” in a New York hospital are putting mothers and babies at risk because of staffing issues, it has been claimed.
At Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital, where Beyonce gave birth to Blue Ivy this January, affluent mothers can pay up to 1,700 dollars-a-night for private full-service rooms where there is one nurse to attend to every mother and baby.
But, according to veteran nurses, this allegedly comes at the expense of less fortunate mothers and babies on the generic maternity ward, according to veteran nurses.
On the sixth floor of the hospital, sometimes up to 18 newborns are being tended to by one nurse only when there should be no more than eight babies to every nurse.
The nurses say this is unnecessarily putting mother and babies lives at risk.
“It’s incredibly stressful,” the Daily mail quoted one nurse who has worked at Lenox Hill for decades as telling the New York Daily News.
“You have too many babies. You can’t do all you need to do for them,” she said.
Another said that the hospital executives don’t care about the 99 percent, “only the one percent.”
The difference between the maternity ward and the private ward – on the fourth floor – is evident.
The “Beyonce room”, as it is allegedly known by hospital staff, has blond-wood floors, dark-wood cabinets and cream-colored walls.
Other rooms, which are dubbed the Park Avenue studio and the premium deluxe, have amenities like plush terry cloth robes, microwaves, coffee makers and plasma screen TVs.
According to the nurses, these were set up three weeks ago to be rented out to affluent patrons. In one Yelp review, a past patient recommended paying for a private room saying it was “well worth the money” because you get treated “like royalty”.
On the fourth floor, the deluxe private room goes for 850 dollars, while the premium deluxe is 1,400 dollars and the ‘Beyonce room’ is 1,750 dollars.
On the sixth floor, semi-private rooms house two patients each and are usually covered by insurance. Small private rooms on that floor that aren’t covered by insurance go for 712 dollars per night and one larger one goes for 1,300 dollars. “These units are incredibly busy and there are not enough nurses and ancillary staff. The stress is that a whole other floor puts pressure on the ratios. And something has to give,” Eileen Toback, chief of staff of the New York Professional Nurses Union, said. The Upper East Side hospital has 632 beds and delivered 3,848 babies last year, mostly catering to middle and upper class patients.
Hospital spokeswoman Barbara Osborn insisted staffing the executive suites has not diminished staffing of the general maternity ward.
“At no point was our maternity unit understaffed,” she said. “Due to the fluid nature of patient volume in maternity units, it is standard procedure for all hospitals to have the flexibility to move staff to best serve the needs of their patients. “Occasionally visitors ask about ‘Beyonce’s room’. There is no name for that suite,” Osborn added.
