Last year, a coalition of state
legislators from Queens ushered through both houses a bill that would mandate a
90-day public comment period if the state wanted to shutter a hospital.
But Gov. David Paterson vetoed the
bill, known as the Hospital Closure Planning Act and despite prodding from the
Queens delegation, the Legislature did not override the veto.
Now however, Manhattan politicians are in an uproar over the likely shuttering of the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital, a closure that may happen without the kind of public notice that the Legislature’s bill promised.
Queens politicos can not help but say,
“I told you so.”
“There was no question in our minds
that St. John’s and Mary Immaculate were not going to be the last hospitals to
close,” said Queens Assembly Member Rory Lancman, who sponsored the bill after
those two hospitals, plus another in Queens, closed. “We did it so another
community wouldn't have to go through what we went through in Queens, which was
groping around in the dark to see how the services that were lost with the
closures would be made up.”
Lancman’s called for the state, before
it approved a closure, to hold public hearings and put out a written report
about how the community would be affected and how hospitals would handle the
extra strain on their service.
At the time, Paterson said such a
process would be ineffective and needlessly expensive in a tight budget year.
The local Manhattan elected
officials who represent the area—including respective Assembly and Senate
Health Committee chairs Dick Gottfried and Tom Duane—have submitted a letter to
state Health Commissioner Richard Daines and Paterson asking for exactly what
Lancman’s bill would have provided. The letter laid out a plan for community
hearings and a longer timeframe.
“This is not the time for rash
decisions, but prudence,” the letter said. “We strongly urge DOH to immediately
stop the current course of action and create a public process to provide for a
fully informed decision, allowing for consideration of other proposals and
active community involvement.”
Under the current proposal for St.
Vincent’s, which is on the brink of bankruptcy, it would partner with Continuum
Health Services, which owns St. Luke’s and Roosevelt hospitals, and its
emergency room and inpatient services would be eliminated.
Continuum’s plan for St. Vincent’s
would leave Manhattan’s West Side without an emergency room below 58th
Street, a prospect they said was unacceptable.
According to state law, hospitals must
notify Department of Health at least 90 days in advance of any proposed
closure. The Health Commissioner must approve of any closure after waiting for
the agency to examine its impact. There is no provision however to notify the
surrounding community.
The story of St. Vincent’s takeover
broke in the press this week, earlier than intended by the hospital or the
state, leading to a public outcry.
Gottfried said it was pure luck that
the public was getting a chance to pressure the state to react to their
concerns.
“A public process is important because different people will
analyze the same data in different ways,” said Gottfried. “It's one thing for someone in the
Health Department to say ‘well, patients will just go from over here to over
there, that doesn’t look like such a big deal.’ But the patients might
look at that statement and feel very differently about it.”
However, state Health Department
spokesperson Claudia Hutton said that the public’s expectations for hearings
and detailed information were unrealistic in a private health marketplace.
“Ideally, no [hospital] would ever close, or if they did, there would be so much time … that every household would get a letter from the hospital saying this is what we’re doing, and this is who’s going to take over the services. But that’s not how business works,” Hutton explained. “If you have 150 people come and say ‘I love this hospital, this is where my baby was born, they saved my dad,’ that doesn't change the fact that if the hospital cannot keep itself financially viable, then the state has a problem.”
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