Cuomo Thanks Philosophy Care Nursing Home for Ventilator Donation

On Easter Sunday, Governor Andrew Cuomo made a visit to Pathways Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to thank them for their "incredibly beautiful, generous" donation of 35 lifesaving ventilators to New York hospitals.

The unsolicited donation came as a gesture of goodwill after Cuomo warned that hospitals, in their current state, wouldn't be equipped to handle the number of COVID-19 cases that New York was anticipating in the early days of the pandemic. Officials predicted New York would need 140,000 hospital beds and 40,000 intensive care units with ventilators.

"The key piece of equipment that we needed were ventilators," Cuomo said.

After he got the call, he admitted that the gesture surprised him. "In some ways, it was the last place that you would think would come forward because it was a nursing home … and we're most worried about nursing homes because the vulnerable population, they are in nursing homes."

Pathways Nursing and Rehabilitation Center is part of Philosophy Care, a network of skilled nursing facilities in New York and New Jersey. Philosophy Care's facilities use ventilators to provide breathing support for residents with respiratory ailments.

But Philosophy Care founder and CEO Bent Philipson said the decision was easy. "New York state had more of an immediate need and we were happy to help."

This pandemic has brought a lot of pain, uncertainty, and stress, but it has also brought the state and the nation closer together.

"When things are at their worst, sometimes people are at their best," the governor said as he addressed the staff. "[This is] the family of New York we talk about. We're a family — upstate, downstate — we're all one family [and] that family is there to support one another."

The reason for Governor Cuomo's visit on Easter Sunday wasn't just to personally thank the staff at Philosophy Care's facility in Niskayuna, it was also to return their ventilators. While coronavirus-related deaths in New York continue to rise, the numbers have not even come close to the surge that officials predicted when the outbreak first began. The pandemic is still ongoing, but trends are starting to show that the epidemic is finally starting to peak.

It's important to see positivity and hope wherever possible. For Cuomo, he felt that spark in Bent Philipson's decision to extend Philosophy Care's valuable resources to those who needed it the most.

"Their gesture was so beautiful and so kind and so symbolic of everything we want to be at our best. Everything we aspire to be. Everything we're all trying to be," he said.

Governor Cuomo ended his thank-you by saying, "Listen to our better angels. Be better, be more generous, more gracious, more loving."

It’s the kind of advice we should all strive to internalize during these unprecedented times. We can never predict what's going to happen next week, next month, next year, or even tomorrow. What we do have control over, however, is how we respond in the face of urgency. Let’s look to Philosophy Care as an example of the light we can be in the darkness.