Queens Tribune
 
....February 12, 4:16 PM
 
 
 
Healthcare Crisis: Emergency Rooms At Two Hospitals To Shut Saturday, Facilities Gone By Feb. 28

Staff and local residents gathered Wednesday morning to board buses to Albany.
By BRIAN M. RAFFERTY

As the first few drops of an early morning rain began to fall Wednesday, four buses pulled out from in front of St. John’s Hospital Queens in Elmhurst, filled with hospital staff, union members, former patients and nearby residents all carrying the same somber message – save us, before it is too late.

The mood was as grim and desperate as the situation in which the hospital and its sister, Mary Immaculate in Jamaica, find themselves. Only days are left before the emergency rooms stop accepting patients altogether. The hospitals themselves may be closed before the end of the month.

For the people who boarded the buses, which were headed to Albany in a final plea to ask the Governor and the Legislature to find aid at any level – city, state or federal, time was running out.



The Hospitals Today

The FDNY confirmed Tuesday that pediatric emergency patients are no longer being brought o St. John’s; psychiatric emergency patients are no longer being taken to Mary Immaculate.

“St. John’s closed its cafeteria on Monday, and the exodus has begun,” said Dan Andrews, spokesman for Borough President Helen Marshall. “We are hearing a number of different developments on almost a daily basis.”

Caritas, the company that purchased the two hospitals from St. Vincent Medical Services just more than two years ago, declared bankruptcy last week. The medical group was in court Tuesday to get legal approval for its bankruptcy. The staff at the hospitals has been notified that they will lose their jobs.

The company has been working for the last few months to get state aid to stay open, but aside from a recent $6 million infusion to allow the hospitals to make payroll, no new money has come or been promised.

“Since there has been no official or unofficial news from Albany this week regarding a possible solution to the hospitals’ financial crisis, the Board [of Trustees] was, much to its dismay, left with no recourse. Time has essentially run out,” a statement from Caritas read. “In the ensuing weeks, Caritas and its dedicated staff of medical professionals will make every possible effort to ensure that patients are properly cared for as our health system begins the complex process of winding down its programs and operations.”

That winding down includes entirely shutting down both hospitals’ emergency rooms this Saturday, with full closure of both facilities to happen by Feb. 28.

“There are 5,000 families in Lefrak City who rely on this hospital,” said George Onuorah as he stood ready to board a bus to Albany Wednesday morning. “This will have a devastating impact on our community. The Governor needs to do whatever is possible to keep this hospital open.”

Jim Galloway, president of the Lefrak Merchants Association, pleaded for a solution. “We want the governor to do the right thing – he has to do the right thing; he has the power,” Galloway said.



Covering Emergencies

Should there be no last-minute savior, the other hospitals of Queens will be forced to pick up the burden that these two hospitals will no longer be able to shoulder. For St. John’s, that means that Elmhurst Hospital, Wyckoff Hospital, New York Hospital Queens and Forest Hills-LIJ will see a likely surge in demand.

For Mary Immaculate, Jamaica Hospital and Queens Hospital Center will be the two main facilities to share the burden, along with North Shore-LIJ, which is considerably further away.

Mike Hinck, a spokesman for Queens Hospital Center, said that his facility is operating, depending on the service, at or near capacity.

“In 2008 we saw 115,000 emergency room visits,” he said. Mary Immaculate had 45,000. “It is to be assumed that we’ll see a large portion of that come our way.”

Al Aviles, the head of the City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs Elmhurst Hospital and Queens Hospital Center, said HHC has reached out to the state for financial aid to help offset the expected burden.

 
 

The emergency entrance at St. John’s will be permanently closed Saturday.

“Elmhurst Hospital Center and Queens Hospital Center are already experiencing significant increases in emergency department patients as ambulances have begun to bypass both St. John’s and Mary Immaculate Hospitals,” Aviles said Wednesday. “We are in the process of adding staff to the emergency departments in both HHC facilities to better handle the spikes in volume, but we are very concerned about the possibility of longer delays for patients in the ER.”

He added that HHC is continuing to talk to the State Health Department about funding needed to expand both ER staff and bed capacity in the inpatient units at the two HHC hospitals to accommodate the significant number of additional patients that would otherwise be served by the two closing hospitals.

At NYHQ, the concern is very high for providing emergency care.

“Queens’ hospitals are already facing high demands for care, including emergency and inpatient care,” spokeswoman Cynthia Bacon said. “We care for more than 100,000 patients in our emergency department per year. Our emergency department has been consistently at 97 to 100 percent occupancy.”



Long-Term Care

As far as beds are concerned, all the borough hospitals tend to be at or close to capacity on any given day. To lose nearly 400 beds in the borough from the closure of St. John’s and Mary Immaculate would create a major concern for people needing hospital stays.

Even though NYHQ is preparing to open up 80 new beds shortly, and Queens Hospital Center is also on the verge of opening an expansion, they cannot meet all of the needs, officials say.

There is also a concern that the added burden carried by other Queens hospitals could push them into the red as they see an influx in Medicare cases, which often have dramatically low reimbursement rates, with some hospitals getting as little as $7 for a doctor’s consultation from Medicare.

There are concerns that the closings could cause a domino effect through the borough, leading to the closing of other Queens hospitals.

At NYHQ, though the company is doing well, one prominent board member shared her concern. Former Borough President Claire Shulman said “We’re in the black, but perilously close to the apocalypse.”



No Help Coming

A statement from Mayor Mike Bloomberg issued Wednesday did not appear to show that a solution to the crisis was imminent.

“The closing of Mary Immaculate and St. John’s Hospitals will pose great challenges for the remaining hospitals in Queens, and the Health and Hospitals Corporation in particular, to meet the needs of a growing borough,” said Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “We are hopeful the State Department of Health will act swiftly to provide adequate emergency support so needs can be responsibly met. We will continue our work with the state on this issue that is important to all in Queens.”

A Caritas spokesman said Wednesday that the bankruptcy court accepted the company’s plan, which includes paying back the creditors from whom Caritas has been borrowing money to keep the hospitals open, as well as vendors. Any outstanding debt would be repaid from the profits on the sale of the property of the two hospitals.

The spokesman said that there are several interested parties, including North Shore-LIJ Health Systems and MedCap, which is operated by the owners of the defunct New Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills. Parkway closed in November by order of the State Dept. of Health.