I am writing in support of the transfer of two acute care hospitals from Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. As President of the Medical staff of these two hospitals, I represent the Physicians, Dentists, and Podiatrists that comprise the professional staff.
We have suffered and struggled over the past 10 years with poor management, questionable administrators, and most certainly, people who were unfamiliar with the health care environment in the City of New York. These multiple groups and others were recruited from systems outside the boundary lines of our great City, and were, at the least, unable to acclimate to this challenging and complex system, and failed.
The medical staff of the Queens region has come to a decision that St. John’s Hospital in Elmhurst and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica must be divested as one hospital, two campuses. Our staff functions synergistically and moves from one campus to the other on a daily basis.
Our Resident training programs (all fully accredited by the AMA, ADA, and AAPM) are based and accredited on the diverse patient population of both sites. The separation of these facilities would most certainly be detrimental to the training of the young health care practitioners to a point that some programs would be closed.
There are elements out in the marketplace that would, for their own economic gain, do anything, say anything, and promise anything to stop the process of this transfer. Their goals are simply to close one or both of these institutions.
The medical leadership of the Queens region of SVCMC has met several times with the medical leadership and administrators of Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. We have discovered an institution that is functioning on solid ground. The Administration grew up in the New York City healthcare environment and has demonstrated to us their competence and success. They have succeeded in building a state of the art institution with a positive margin and know how to deliver quality care in the inner city while keeping the financial line in balance.
Beyond this, we who have been part of a Catholic Mission for a great part of our careers have been assured that this Mission would remain and that our system would continue to follow Catholic Directives and Ethics as they relate to the care of our patients.
Our dedicated medical staff cannot stress the need to keep both the facilities as one hospital. We oppose any other divestiture. We believe that under the leadership of the Wyckoff Heights staff, our direction can only be positive.
We are requesting that all parties, the judge, the creditors, the U.S. Trustee, the Board of Trustees, and the sponsors move to make this transfer as seamless as possible and not be misdirected by other interested but unreliable and failing systems.
This letter has been written at the request of the St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers Regional Executive Committee of the Queens Hospitals, a decision that was unanimous.
We are awaiting a positive outcome regarding our future, one that will allow Mary Immaculate and St. John’s Queens hospitals to continue to care for patients in Queens as we have for over 100 years.
— Dr. Vito A. Cardo Jr., DDS, is the President, Regional Medical Executive Committee, Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers Queens hospitals
