ER reopening at St. Vincent's site

From the NY Times:

A 200-foot-long shiplike structure floated into its berth on Seventh Avenue half a century ago. Unable to ignore it, Greenwich Villagers have loved or hated it ever since.

Their descendants will have the same privilege. The structure — originally the Joseph Curran Building of the National Maritime Union, then the Edward and Theresa O’Toole Medical Services Building of St. Vincent’s Hospital — is emerging in its third form, as a stand-alone emergency room and medical care center.

The O’Toole Building’s newly restored concrete facade, glowing white even on an overcast day, is a surprise. With the removal of the one-inch-square tiles that had been applied in 1966, the building has gained freshness and power. Its porthole-shaped cusps have never looked more shipshape. The prows at the West 12th Street and West 13th Street corners seem as if they could cleave a sea lane.

More surprising yet is that the building survived to see this day. In October 2008, the Landmarks Preservation Commission granted St. Vincent’s hardship application, asserting that it could not perform and sustain its charitable mission unless it were permitted to raze the O’Toole Building and replace it with a hospital tower.

St. Vincent’s closed in April 2010, before it could put its plans into effect. The hardship application was shelved. Now, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System is developing the new emergency room and medical care center by reusing the O’Toole Building and rehabilitating many of its architectural features.

Manhattan gets some health care back. Queens gets 2 stalled sites at Mary Immaculate and St. John's.

New Christine Quinn attack ad

"The closing of St. Vincent's hospital leaves a community out in the cold," Arthur Cheliotes, President of Local 1180 said. "Today's new ad calls attention to a community where residents have nowhere to go in the event of an emergency or health crisis. Christine Quinn played an integral role in letting St. Vincent's disappear and we cannot support a mayor who would let her donors dictate development at the sacrifice of our communities."

From the Politicker:

Update (12:40 p.m.): It turns out that there was an error in the ad. About 10 seconds in, writing on the screen claims that Quinn received $59,400 in campaign contributions from Rudin Management. But according to a spokesman for the New York City Campaign Finance Board, that's not the case.

Thanks to a quirk in the board's electronic database, some contributions given before term limits were extended happen to show up twice.

“Those contributions shouldn’t be counted twice," explained spokesman Matt Sollars. In fact, employees of the company have contributed $29,700 to Ms. Quinn's 2013 campaign, he said.

Like $29,700 is something to sneeze at.

St. Vincent's going condo

From the Real Deal:

The New York City Council voted to approve the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure actions required to move forward on Rudin Management’s residential development at the site of the former St. Vincent’s hospital in the West Village, according to a statement today from Rudin.

The City Council indicated to The Real Deal in an email that the final approval vote was 49 to 1.

The City Council’s decision will be final “unless the Mayor elects to veto a Council action within five days of the vote,” a spokesperson for the City Council said. But also, the Council could override a potential veto within 10 days with a two-thirds majority.

The agreement includes a “number of modifications” secured by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the statement said. Previous reports, indicate that those concessions included a reduction of the number of units planned, from 450 to 350, and donations from Rudin of $1 million to arts programs for local schools P.S. 41, P.S. 3 and the Foundling School, and $1 million to MFY Legal Services, a non-profit that advocates for affordable housing.

Who needs health care?

Ad ties Quinn to demise of hospital

From The Politicker:

Manhattan Media CEO Tom Allon has taken out a provocative new advertisement in a local newspaper in Christine Quinn’s home district that accuses the City Council speaker of letting St. Vincent’s Hospital close in order to reap real estate donations.

The ad leads in bold type with the words, DID CHRISTINE QUINN BET YOUR LIFE TO BECOME MAYOR and shows her kissing real estate developer Bill Rudin at an unidentified event.

Rudin Management has made a bid to redevelop the former hospital as a housing and retail space with a medical facility. Some community members have pushed for the hospital to be re-opened and fully operational, but the economics of that plan do not appear to be feasible either to Mr. Rudin or to city officials.

Hospital run into ground on purpose?

From NY1:

Manhattan prosecutors are reportedly looking into whether top executives at St. Vincent's Hospital purposely let it go broke so private developers could buy the property.

The New York Post says fraud investigators with the Manhattan district attorney's office are looking at millions of dollars in payments made to St. Vincent's executives and consultants before the hospital declared bankruptcy.

Sources tell the paper that bankruptcy allowed the hospital to get approval from the state to sell to the Rudin family, which plans to build luxury housing on the site.

A spokeswoman for the hospital tells the Post that it had not been contacted by the district attorney's office and is not aware of any investigation.

St. Vincent's Hospital closed in April 2010.

Clueless Carolyn

Watch as an activist confronts Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney about City Council Speaker Quinn's failure to save St. Vincent's Hospital.

Manhattan CB2 meeting results in first amendment trampling

Dear QC :

The Manhattan CB2 meeting was to discuss LIJ installing an "urgent care center" in the former space of Saint Vincent's Hospital. The chair of the meeting (he's not the chair of CB2), Brad Hoylman, physically and forcibly yanked the microphone out of Yetta Kurland's hands, in order to silence her at last night's meeting.



In this one, cops were called out (they appear in the end), to try to silence some angry citizens at last night's meeting:



The Queens angle could be: look at how difficult it is to try to get back a hospital, after one has closed. The political machine works against us, including using intimidating and physical tactics such as calling cops and yanking microphones out of our very hands.

Thanks and respectful regards,
-- Louis

Brad Hoylman yanked the mic? You mean this guy?

From 9/11 to this?

You're kidding!

From the Wall Street Journal:

At Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, the emergency room has expanded into a former café and conference area as hospital officials cope with double their patient capacity.

At New York Hospital Queens, patients in March waited an average of 17 hours to be placed in beds, sometimes being held in hallways, waiting rooms or sunrooms.

"If you want to think you're in a war-torn third-world country, just go to the ER at New York Hospital Queens on a Friday afternoon," said Dr. Paul Aaronson, president of the Queens County Medical Society.

As the closure of St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan sparks fear about the impact on the remaining hospitals, hospital employees and advocates in Queens say they continue to struggle with the effects of three hospital closures—two last year, and one the previous fall. The overcrowding problem, they say, is exacerbated by a growing elderly and immigrant population, and state cuts in hospital funding.

"Queens going in was significantly underbedded," said Kenneth E. Raske, president of Greater New York Hospital Association. "They have the lowest bed-to-population ratio of any of the boroughs."

With a potential state budget cuts on the way, Mr. Raske said it is imperative that the 10 remaining hospitals remain financially stable. "It could precipitate a public-health crisis if one of them were to go down," he said.

St. Vincent's closing tomorrow

From the NY Post:

As the hospital prepares to close down its emergency room tomorrow, Paterson is proposing that Lenox Hill Hospital temporarily operate a 24/7 "urgent-care facility" at St. Vincent's until a permanent location can be found.

But doctors at St. Vincent's say the idea is an ill-planned sop to local pols who demand that St. Vincent's be saved.

Despite its name, an "urgent-care facility" handles only low-threshold injuries and illnesses; more serious problems would have to be transported by ambulance to other hospitals.

Which raises another serious health issue: Many more seriously ill patients, like those suffering heart attacks, may lose critically important treatment time by going to the urgent-care facility rather than a genuine emergency room.

Said Dr. Charles Carpati, chief of intensive care at St. Vincent's: "It seems like they were trying to have a speedy political resolution that sounded good but was not the result of any study or the voice of the community or physicians."

Then there's the financial issue: Use of St. Vincent's property would have to be approved by the bankruptcy court -- not at all a sure thing.

Not to mention that the state grant covers only two years of a five-year contract -- and, like St. Vincent's, Lenox Hill also has been struggling for cash.

Which gets us to the fundamental point: There are too many hospitals in New York City -- and the competition is sapping the financial integrity of all of them.

- Ok, so Governor Paterson scrambled to do something to put a band-aid on the loss of St. Vincent's. When two hospitals in Queens closed on the same day, he did absolutely nothing.
- Screaming by Manhattan pols got a small bone thrown to them, screaming by Queens pols accomplished absolutely nothing.
- The Post looks at NYC as a whole and determines there are too many hospitals operating instead of looking at individual neighborhoods and how they are impacted by the closures. Clusters of open hospitals in Manhattan don't help people in southeastern Queens.
- Closing hospitals anywhere in the city while pushing to add a million more people to the city is not exactly the smartest move. But Bloomberg gives less than a shit about any of this. After all, he has a McMansion in Bermuda to retire to each weekend.

Our problems in a nutshell

From mole333 at The Daily Gotham:

This is what really gets me. Bloomberg, the city council and Albany give more and more tax breaks to developers, companies like Exxon/Mobil and Bank of America pay no taxes, and our politicians spend our tax money on slush funds that then turn around and help them get elected. And all the while, our schools, libraries, firehouses, parks and hospitals get cut more and more. I have never heard Bloomberg say we need to give less to Developers and more to our schools and hospitals.

And for each hospital that closes, that puts further pressure on the surviving hospitals. And as long as we have a substantial number of uninsured, our emergency rooms will be overcrowded with people whose only healthcare option is the emergency room. This cycle leads to more closings, which overburdens the surviving hospitals more, bringing them down. Healthcare reform, going even further than what we already have enacted, is still needed. But we also need some politicians that realize that cutting hospitals, schools, libraries and firehouses will lead to a dysfunctional city.

That's 100% correct. So why do we keep the same tired old shit in office?

St. Vincent's failure foreshadowing things to come

From the Gotham Gazette:

New Yorkers are used to hearing doomsday calls and cries that the closing of this or that institution will cause irreparable harm to the city, and the cynical newsreader often walks away unimpressed, sure that at the end of the day it will be no big deal. But community activists, health care experts and many local officials said, to put it bluntly, that the closing of the St. Vincent’s Hospital is a big deal, and a sign of an intensifying contraction of the already overburdened health-care apparatus in the five boroughs. This, they fear, will lead to chaos, a spike in avoidable fatalities and an inadequate response to a future disaster, natural or otherwise.

Bloomberg's absence from the discussions involving St. Vincent's future has disappointed community groups and unions (3,500 workers would lose their jobs). Stringer, along with Comptroller John Liu and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio -- all of whom are seen as likely mayoral candidates in 2013 -- won applause at the 32BJ meeting by pointing the finger at City Hall, accusing it of inaction.

With the crowd on their side, the officials pleaded for the city to do something.

What? No one knows, and if three mayoral hopefuls cannot offer an alternative to the mayor’s silence, Bloomberg probably cannot do much either. He has already proposed cuts in city services, so a city bailout at this point seems unlikely at best. The reality is that the closing of two hospitals in Queens and the fate of St. Vincent's are not isolated incidents but part of a system failure. All the city’s private hospitals could be threatened by the American notion that health care must generate revenue. That is something a Community Board chair or even a mayor who has made public health one of his top priorities cannot change.

Where was the hand-wringing a year ago?

From the NY Times:

This week, Gov. David A. Paterson pledged to help keep St. Vincent’s, the last remaining Catholic general hospital in the city, open for another month while officials looked for a long-term solution. But on Friday, a spokeswoman for the governor said that while the state was trying to help, it would not be able to single-handedly provide enough money for the hospital to stay open.

“The governor’s office has been meeting nonstop with all the stakeholders to find a solution,” said the spokeswoman, Marissa Shorenstein. “Governor Paterson is doing everything he can to keep St. Vincent’s going. But we can’t do it alone. We need partners.”

So far, the hospital, which is $700 million in debt and in danger of bankruptcy, has not found a partner.

When Caritas closed St. John's and Mary Immaculate Hospitals last year, it had only $188 million in liabilities - for 2 hospitals. While workers were asking for help:

Governor Paterson didn't give a shit.
Christine Quinn didn't give a shit.
Mayor Bloomberg didn't give a shit.
Local 1199 of the S.E.I.U. was more interested in attending Obama's inauguration.

Number of people in Queens: 2.3M
Number of hospitals in Queens: 9

Number of people in Manhattan: 1.6M
Number of hospitals in Manhattan: 23

And most of the "million more people" Bloomberg wants to see in the city by 2030 are heading straight to Queens.

Photo from the Daily News