NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 31: Workers prepare dozens of extra medical beds as they are delivered to Mount Sinai Hospital amid the coronavirus pandemic on March 31, 2020 in New York City. Hospitals in New York City, the nation’s current epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, are facing shortages of beds, ventilators and protective equipment for medical staff. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) As many businesses in New York closed because of the spread of the coronavirus, Helene Chabin, 84, a hospitals medical claims expert, assumed she, too, would cease working.
“Doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen, even restaurant workers — those people I considered essential,” she said. But then she learned she was considered an essential worker.
“I didn’t consider myself essential. [But] when the head of our company sent an email and said we’re going to be open, it made sense. Hospitals can’t function if there are no funds [for them].”
Chabin has been working out of her home in Queens, N.Y. She handles appeals on behalf of hospitals when insurance companies decline to reimburse the hospitals for medical treatment of Medicaid patients. She has been doing the work for more than 30 years, and she enjoys it.
When she’s not working, Chabin has been going on walks with her son and son-in-law. “We try to get out,” she said, adding she always wears a mask. Still, she said, “I haven’t been in the [grocery] store for weeks and weeks.”
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