FLATLINING HOSPITALS

Queens is about to be plunged into a health crisis of deadly proportions.
Two of its busiest hospitals serving some 200,000 residents and employing over 2,500 health service workers are slipping away. As these two institutions are being allowed to “flatline,” some people will die - and who will be to blame? We have to blame the New York State Department of Health.
They are the controlling agency which allowed the troubled St. John’s Queens Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital to be acquired in 2006 by Wyckoff Heights Medical Center’s affiliate Caritas Health Care Planning, Inc.
Both hospitals had been nearly bankrupt for over seven months under the ownership of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers before the sale.
For the record, neither hospital was cited by the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, also known as the Berger Commission Report, for closing because both were deemed to be immensely needed by their communities and for the negative impact such a closing would have.
According to a 2006 report commissioned by Borough President Helen Marshall, Queens is critically underserved when it comes to hospital beds per number of residents. The report showed that Queens had 1.4 hospital beds per 1,000 people in a borough of 2.3 million residents, compared to Manhattan’s 7.1 beds per 1,000 for a population of 1.5 million.
On Friday, January 23, the Board of Directors of Caritas Health Care, Inc., which operates both hospitals, adopted a resolution authorizing the corporation to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of this month.
We call on the Department of Health to take responsibility for these two health centers and find a way to keep them open and available or let the consequences be in your hands. Work within the system; find a buyer or a manager.
Save our hospitals so they can save us all.