By Michael Morton
“We are making investments,” said Bernadette Kingham, senior vice president for St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, the system which runs Mary Immaculate. “That's not to say this isn't a very difficult environment.” St. Vincent was forced to close St. Joseph's Hospital in Flushing last year because it did not have enough patients and has moved some of the operations to Mary Immaculate. The Jamaica hospital broke even last year, Kingham said, with plenty of demand for treatment in the community.At Parkway, hospital spokesman Gerald McKelvey said the facility has increased the number of patients and has been operating near its 220-bed capacity since it was bought by Robert Aquino, the head of several borough health care companies, in June 2004 for $23 million. More than 100 new attending doctors have been become affiliated with the hospital since then, McKelvey said.”We do not understand why Parkway is on Crain's list,” he said. “Whatever services we offer, you can see that we are supported by the community and other hospitals.”With Gov. George Pataki cutting $3 billion in health care costs from his budget, Crain's issued its list Monday of hospitals that medical consultants and executives it spoke with said should be closed down. The magazine said the hospitals named had not only been losing money but provided services duplicated by other facilities nearby.But representatives of the two Queens medical centers on the list and city hospital associations said creating the list was an irresponsible act that needlessly caused panic.Hospitals should be considered for restructuring or closing “only after very careful review,” said Mary Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Greater New York Hospital Association. As it stands now, a recent report from a task force on hospitals and health care formed by Pataki calls for the creation of a 19-member commission to decide which facilities should close, possibly by the state revoking licenses.Johnson said the commission should be bipartisan, and she opposes the governor's budget cuts. Instead her association has proposed a plan that would provide hospitals with funds to either restructure their operations or close.”Over time it would save the health care system a lot of money,” she said. She cautioned that any initiative needed to tread carefully, however.”It needs to make sure the community's health needs would be met,” Johnson said.Parkway's McKelvey said the hospital was vital to the community. “Crain's is not an expect in hospital health care,” he said.St. Vincent's Kingham said the magazine had interviewed a limited number of sources, including some experts who may have spoken badly of competitors. She said Mary Immaculate was a “safety net” hospital that received a number of uninsured patients and handled 45,000 emergency room visits last year.”Can another hospital absorb those?” she asked rhetorically. Still, in the current environment, Mary Immaculate and other hospitals need to abandon their old competitive attitude and work together to streamline the industry, she said.”I think there's recognition by people today that the health care system we know is in jeopardy,” Kingham said.Reach reporter Michael Morton by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
