Open meeting addresses health crisis

Crisis was the word of the morning that leaders used repeatedly to describe the health care situation in Queens.
Nearly 100 business leaders, legislators, health professionals and community members attended the breakfast meeting on February 6 that the Medical Society of the County of Queens and the Queens Chamber of Commerce co-hosted.
“The only avenue that we are going to be able to do this, is to bring the business community and the civic community involved in these discussions,” said Dr. James E. Satterfield, President of the Medical Society of the County of Queens. “We need to move towards a collaborative method of identifying insurers that will grant people access to services that will play fairly and have a fair premium rate.”
During the meeting, the legislators in attendance including Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, Assemblymembers Audrey Pheffer, Andrew Hevesi, Barbara Clark and Ann Margaret Carrozza and City Councilmember Leroy Comrie all spoke about the difficult state of health care in the borough.
Marshall began the discussion by saying that Queens is extremely under-served in terms of hospital beds, and she cited a report that her office put together that 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.
While much of the talk at the meeting focused on the possible closure of St. John’s Queens and Mary Immaculate hospitals - the two filed for bankruptcy the previous day - there was also discussion about insurance reimbursements, decreasing medical malpractice premiums and being able to bring and retain the top doctors to New York State.
Queens Chamber of Commerce President Al Pennisi said that he realized that the state was facing difficult times and there were difficult choices to make, but he asked the state legislators to help Queens deal with this difficult crisis.
In addition, the meeting organizers opened up the floor to the audience who could express their opinion on the issues. Some of those who spoke urged the legislators to help fight against the proposed cuts for the health care industry in Governor David Paterson’s Executive Budget.
“We also are not saying there can’t be any cuts in healthcare,” said Lloyd Bishop, Vice President for Government Affairs and Community Health Initiatives at the Greater New York Hospital Association. “We know that there have to be cuts across the board, but they have to be fair.”