Sunday, September 27, 2009

In a nutshell, Queens is screwed

From the Queens Chronicle:

...a fundamental question remains: will Queens residents have to live with fewer but larger local hospitals in the face of declining capital sources from both the public and private sectors?

Contributing to the hospital industry’s financial decline in Queens is an ongoing exodus of elective procedures — which industry executives said account for nearly 40 percent of revenue at healthy hospitals — into Manhattan and Long Island and a growing number of uninsured residents substituting nearby emergency rooms for primary care offices.

“If you have insurance and your insurance is accepted at a number of facilities — you can go almost anywhere that accepts your insurance,” Nemzoff said. “The emergency room is much more prone to picking up patients in their immediate service area, but as far as being admitted by doctors — these doctors practice at multiple hospitals. If the patient wants to go somewhere else they admit them into another hospital.”

Now many are left wondering whether the current system is sustainable.

“Have we and the state done a good enough job of local health planning in the borough of Queens?” asked one top hospital official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There may be pockets — for example western Queens, or southern Queens and southeastern Queens — where you are very underbedded for the population. But maybe parts of central Queens are overbedded.”

Parkway Hospital owner Dr. Robert Aquino... acknowledged that getting Queens healthcare back on track would be a difficult and costly task, he believes inaction is no longer an option.

“I think Queens is in big trouble,” he said.


Photo from the Times Ledger

12 comments:

Missing Foundation said...

Just read a big write-up in one of the Queens rags on the spiraling hospital problem in Queens and NO WHERE, NO WHERE, is there any discussion of the massive population inflows of people, in particularly, tweeded uninsured people.

Inexcusible. Both paper and planning.

Anonymous said...

Next time they write up about Willets Pt, or LIC why don't some of your doormats out there write to the paper?

Or a pol talks about development?

Or a civic, like everyone's favorite whipping boy, Ditch Kills, crows about more residents with upzoning?

Ask about infra structure and who will pay it.

Or do you 'wish' and 'hope' that it gets taken care of?

Adolf Bloomturd said...

Zat's why I need to be mayor again...and again and again and again and again.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Anonymous said...

Let's borrow Bloomberg's helicopter so we can air-evac the dead and dying.

Anonymous said...

Bloomberg has got his executive suite reserved for him at Lenox Hill Hospital, should he ever need it, so F--K the rest of us.

And Queens?

Ha, ha...it's off his radar!

Anonymous said...

Bloomberg will be remembered as the mayor who overbuilt and under-served NYC.

Actually...he's already undermined it so we'll be paying for his eccentric follies for years to come.

"Let the sick get treated by Bruce Ratner at the Atlantic Yards if they need a good new medical facility. (Or let them eat cake...if they have no bread)"!

Thus sayeth King Mike.

Anonymous said...

It's called THINNING OUT THE HERD by hospital closures.

Oops...then we might actually be decreasing NYC's population by the year 2030 instead of increasing it by one million.

Something's not logical here Mayor Mike!

Anonymous said...

See??? Who needs an overhaul of the American health care system when closing hospitals to "cut costs" is all it takes? Money in, money out. Bodies and lives don't count.

Yay, blindered Capitalism!!!

Anonymous said...

Stop the illegals from using ERs as doctor's offices and you'll see more urban hospitals stay open.

Anonymous said...

People you have to ACT UP! Write letters, ask about services failing as development makes things worse while cameras are rolling.

Nothing will change until you do.

Anonymous said...

When the US secures its borders and our politicians decline to make New York a sanctuary city, our hospitals will stop their closures. We can't afford the illegals using our ER's as their personal physicians and taxpayers have no money to foot the bills. Get rid of the illegals and then you can gauge the cost of health care for all before you change the entire system.

Anonymous said...

Yes, yes it's all the illegals fault...

It's people like you with a severe misunderstanding of the healthcare crisis that helps keep reform from ever happening.