The Federal Emergency Management Agency will be sending more than $1.4 million to the State of Rhode Island to reimburse Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital for the cost of paying its staff overtime to deal with the surge in patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The $1,416,089 Public Assistance grant will reimburse the private, non-profit psychiatric hospital in Riverside – devoted to children and adolescents and affiliated with Brown University – for the cost of paying existing staff overtime between March 2021 and June 2022.
The hospital paid 239 employees for 105,030 overtime hours to provide direct patient care to COVID-19 patients within the emergency, inpatient, and observation departments within the hospital.
“FEMA is pleased to be able to assist Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital with these costs,” said FEMA Region 1 Regional Administrator Lori Ehrlich. “Reimbursing state, county, and municipal governments – as well as eligible non-profits and tribal entities – for the costs incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic is an important part of our nation’s ongoing recovery.”
FEMA’s Public Assistance program is an essential source of funding for states and communities recovering from a federally declared disaster or emergency.
So far, FEMA has provided more than $802 million in Public Assistance grants to Rhode Island to reimburse the state for pandemic-related expenses.