Dr. Zev Carrey: never far from Far Rockaway

As a pulmonologist and a long time member of Hatzalah, it was natural for Dr. Zev Carrey to have been at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. “I was there after the buildings came down. What was notable,” he said, “was that there was nothing to do.”

His choice of occupation also brought him into the maelstrom following Hurricane Sandy. “I did spend time in a mobile medical van in Belle Harbor,” he said. “I offered to see people who needed medical attention after the storm. They were in their homes without the ability to get medical care. I helped provide medical care to those who had no access to medical services and were homebound.”

Carrey has been a practicing pulmonologist for 24 years and will be working at Woodmere Medical Practice as part of the medical staff at Mercy Medical Center. He is working closer to home now, having lived in Far Rockaway for the last 24 years. Previously, he was program director for the Internal Medicine Residency Program for 15 years and Director of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine for 24 years at The Mount Vernon Hospital in lower Westchester. He commuted from there to his home in Far Rockaway.

He lived most of his life in Far Rockaway. Carrey is a graduate of Brooklyn College and studied medicine at the State University of New York’s Downstate Medical Center. He lived on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn during his residency in internal medicine at Brookdale Hospital there and lived in Montreal, Canada while training in a subspecialty of pulmonary and critical care medicine at McGill University. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College in Valhalla, and serves on the Medical Board of Hatzalah of the Rockaways and Nassau County. Carrey is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine and critical care medicine.

He noticed an uptick in respiratory problems following Sandy, with patients having bronchitis, asthma or asthma like symptoms from exposure to the dust or mold. Some needed medical treatment, he said.

While he was working on the medical van in Belle Harbor, “one of the national guard guys came to us,” he recalled. “There were people stuck in the apartment buildings in Belle Harbor and he asked us to supply him with medicines to take to them. He figured out a way to get through to those in the building who needed elevators to get out, the shut ins. They were not allowed to bring prescriptions; we had to prescribe for people we didn’t necessarily see. People bent the rules to provide car for those who couldn’t get it. Many people worked together.”

Carrey is joining a hospital that is celebrating its hundredth year of providing service to the area. Mercy Medical Center is designated a Breast Imaging Center of Excellence by the American College of Radiology, and a Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence® by the American Society For Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

“My goal,” stressed Carrey, “is to provide medical care to the community that I live in. Medicine is a challenging environment nowadays with a lot of regulations. Mercy is trying to get excellent care to the community by the members of our community.”