Friday, April 10, 2009

The aftermath of hospital closings

From the Times Ledger:

When Borough President Helen Marshall toured the emergency rooms at Jamaica Hospital and Forest Hills Hospital last month, she was startled by what she saw.

“The whole floor was just people in those gurneys,” Marshall said. “They were packed together, one next to the other and all down the halls. There were at least 20 that were waiting to be admitted, but there were no beds. There was just no space.”

The scene Marshall described has become commonplace in Queens. In the wake of St. John’s and Mary Immaculate hospitals shutting down Feb. 28 after its management company, Caritas Health Care Inc., filed for bankruptcy, many of the borough’s 10 hospitals have been operating above capacity in what Marshall and hospital administrators have deemed a “public health crisis” in Queens.

22 comments:

John said...

No shit Helen. What happened to your injunction to save the "Catiras" hospitals, bitch?

Anonymous said...

What do these idiots think would happen? I spent 12 hours in a gurney in a hall at Astoria General 8 years ago awaiting emergency surgery for a life-threatening condition. That is, I was triaged to the the top of the list and still waited 12 hours.

What now? All of those patients are on their way over. And, they are sicker. People put off care during recessions when they do not have access to employer-paid plans and have not yet gotten poor enough for medicaid or been in the system long enough to know how to game it.

Anonymous said...

oh and this surprises you? where else would all the illegals be going to go. ER, everyone has the right to been seen, even if you don't have insurance they can't refuse you. Saint John's and the other hospitals failed due to they took in patients that didn't have insurance and now they can't get paid by the state. HEY try this, only take patients that actually have insurance, private or state. If illegals want insurance they have to apply at a state or city office, before they flood our ERs. the hospitals most likely waiting on payments from the state and that's why they failed. Question if Saint John showed 40 million open for payments and now they closed, where and who gets the money? Its amazing 40 million, see i think it was the management company that failed their staff and caused it to closed down. Hopefully will get a new hospital, maybe North Shore or LIJ at least, well I hope they know what their doing. Helen Marshall why don't you ask yourself why haven't we looked into the managments books??

Anonymous said...

The problem with that approach is that it would set the entire community up for epidemic disease. Unless these people visit hospitals we can have a return of the conditions that led to typhoid, cholera, and yellow fever in the last century.

Anonymous said...

What the hell did that dumb lackey boro prez think...that closing hospitals was going to improve health care?

Let's bring back MASH units for civilian use in Queens.

Damn house servant to developers!

She's got to be one of the dimmest light bulbs in some far utility closet.

But you don't need much of a mind to be a borough president.

Just some strings from developer/puppets attached to your mouth so you can repeatedly say..."YES"!

Anonymous said...

Good idea!

Instead of implementing those extensive enlargement plans for Queens Borough Hall...put some MASH units
behind Marshal's office and let her get the full impact!

Anonymous said...

Put some of those units in City Hall park too.

Reich's Chancellor Bloomberg allowed this all to happen under his watch.

The hospital closings primarily affected less privileged neighborhoods...you know the kind inhabited by "people of color"...
so what the hell does he care?

Some more ethnic cleansing which frees up these nabes for upscale development!

Now in a "democracy" like ours you can't use overt Nazi tactics to remove "undesirable" races but you can (more discreetly) kill them off
by closing hospitals they depend on.

Seig heil....Bloomberg!

Anonymous said...

was startled by what she saw.

“The whole floor was just people in those gurneys,” Marshall said. “They were packed together, one next to the other and all down the halls. There were at least 20 that were waiting to be admitted, but there were no beds. There was just no space.”

--------------

THIS IS PATHETIC. THE PEOPLE THAT CONTROL YOUR LIVES HAVE NO IDEA ON HOW YOU LIVE.

WHAT IS THEIR INCENTIVE?

YOU REELECT THEM.

YOU PRAISE THEM.

ANYTIME SOMEONE STANDS UP YOU HECKLE THEM OR REMAIN SILENT AND GIVE THEM NO SUPPORT.

UNTIL YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO ACT UP YOU WILL BE PLAYTHINGS OF THE MACHINE.

Anonymous said...

Remember one thing.

Communities with a large number of immigrants always get poor services.

If you stand around while someone else (with a vested interest in doing so) calls your home an immigrant community, you have just signed on to poor civic services.

You have just let yourself get redlined.

Things will start to spiral out of control.

No one will want to move in.

Your new neighbors will not complain, but after a few years move on to be replaced by a new set of clueless greenhorns.

(I know, the press in Queens always have stories of people that are moving in because they love the diversity - about as credible as people moving into the former Soviet Union to live in a workers paradise)

Anonymous said...

I am glad she saw for herself. Now if we could just drag Bloomberg, Vallone and a few other heavy-hitters over we might make the point.

Of course, that's assuming they give a damn.

Wade Nichols said...

The problem with that approach is that it would set the entire community up for epidemic disease. Unless these people visit hospitals we can have a return of the conditions that led to typhoid, cholera, and yellow fever in the last century.

War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
Diversity is strength
Typhoid, cholera, and yellow fever are OUR STRENGTHS!!!!

(I know, the press in Queens always have stories of people that are moving in because they love the diversity - about as credible as people moving into the former Soviet Union to live in a workers paradise)

These people are known as - "Those who haven't yet been mugged"

They called these sham villages in the Soviet Union - Potemkin Villages. Perhaps the borough of Queens should change it's name to: Potemkin Borough to reflect reality.

Anonymous said...

The past is prelude. We have plenty of experience with Potemkin Villages in New York. Remember the rotting buildings with the pretty flower decals in the Koch mayoralty?

Maybe we need the Battleship Potemkin instead, to lob a few shells at City Hall.

Anonymous said...

This stuff is also happening in the Brooklyn hospitals too! But BP Marty Markowitz has over $ 64 million dollars for a music venue "Marty Markowitz Concert Hall" at Seaside Park! I wonder the next time HE NEEDS an Angioplasty whether he will have to wait in the ER amongst the others? I Think NOT. This shit should stop or throw the bums out of office.

Anonymous said...

And wonderful Kings County hospital was the proximate cause of our last major riot. An innocent Australian Jew died because a cockeyed driver ran down 2 children and a crap hospital deprived them of any chance of recovery.

Anonymous said...

wait til all these lowlifes start going to north shore and lij. thatll really flip those yentas out. ha

Anonymous said...

don't think they take without insurance and they don't apply for the medicaid on site, it's not a city hospital, so hopefully we save to say we still have an option if you have insurance.

Anonymous said...

Those poorer folks can't go to North Shore or LIJ for treatment.

No ambulance will take them that far in an emergency.

That's the law in New York City.

Thanks Mayor Mike.

You've got high end Lenox Hill Hospital etc.
to deal with any of your headaches or bellyaches.

Astoria residents...well...they've got sub-standard Astoria Genera!

And you think there's no racist agenda in NYC?

C'mon....wake up!

Anonymous said...

Another partial building collapse. This time in Long Island City. A woman was trapped under a staircase and rescued by FDNY.

I hope that she didn't have to spend several hours in the hall waiting to be seen.

Needless to say calls to DOB went unanswered.

Signed,

Lady whose living room ceiling collapsed onto her living room floor, mad as hell she didn't patent,since falling buildings are the new rage--she wants royalties.

Anonymous said...

I don't know where antisemitic anonymous has been, but LIJ has already gotten the overflow caused by these closed hospitals. LIJ emergency was pretty busy when my 83 year old father in law went there with chest pains. It was very crowded. Staff said that they are much busier since these other hospitals closed. So much for corporatizing health care.

Anonymous said...

I don't have to see the inside of any hospital to know that closing two of them in a given area would result in more people going to the other ones. What did she think, people would just stop getting sick?

Unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

And this by the way is in the absence of anything unusual such a flu pandemic, riot, civil disturbance, or terrorism incident.

Anonymous said...

The solution shouldn't have been to close St. John's and Mary Immaculate and then give extra funding to such a poorly managed,
substandard facility as Mt.Sinai Hospital of Queens. This is has a
name that associates themselves with a quality facility but it's level of care is determined by internal management from the old regime that hide behind doors that do not care about the patients but the bottom line and their reputation in the community. They think by sprucing up the lobby and putting a tv in front of your stretcher in the ER while you're waiting for a bed for 24 hours suffices for charging your insurance for a day's stay if you need to be admitted. The house physicians are overworked; and so
many of the staff members are difficult to understand because of
their heavy accents.