General hospital grand hotel

 

 Queens Chronicle

A mixed-use building that is part medical center and part hotel is on track to open in the next few months, developers recently announced.

The new 18-story mixed use tower at 42-31 Union St. in Flushing will be home to the Eastern Mirage Medical Center and the Eastern Mirage Hotel and will be operational before September, Fleet Financial Group announced.

The medical center will incorporate the hotel amenities into its patients healing process. Those staying in the healthcare facility will be offered access to an indoor pool, spa and fitness center, as well as a Michelin-rated restaurant and bar.

“Eastern Mirage Medical Center incorporates the most advanced technology available to hospitals today, along with a more welcome, hospitality-inspired setting,” Richard Xia, president of Fleet Financial Group, said in an April 8 statement. “By creating a symbiotic relationship with the building’s healthcare facility and luxury hotel, we hope to create a steady flow of visitors to both businesses.”

According to Fleet Financial Group, the medical center will utilize cutting-edge amenities, such as a five-layer curtain wall providing enhanced sound insulation and natural light, as well as environmentally friendly materials and systems, high ceilings, and Turkish marble floors. 

Patients will have an almost completely touchless experience, as well: The center will use facial and voice recognition features for offices and elevators.

The plans for the building — which will be the tallest in Flushing — also include more than 34,000 square feet of outdoor place, including an all-glass roof terrace with a panoramic view of New York City.

Mayor de Blasio stands surrounded by soldiers to protect him from his constituents cries

NY Post

Three livid bystanders heckled Mayor Bill de Blasio — demanding coronavirus tests and better healthcare — as he tried to speak to medical personnel outside Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx Wednesday.

“Yo, de Blasio; I need a test, de Blasio!,” shouted a young man from behind a fence outside Lincoln Hospital, about 40 feet from where the mayor was thanking members of the US Air Force, who were deployed to the public hospital to help treat coronavirus patients.

“I need a test brother. Some people right here need a test. Where they at? Seriously I see you addressing these people what about these homeless right here,” the man yelled, pointing to a crowd outside the hospital.

“All these people right here are sick. Ain’t nobody addressing them,” he screamed.
The group was furious about the dramatic shortage of tests in New York City, a problem plaguing communities across the country — and one that experts chalk up to a series of missteps made by federal officials during the early days of the pandemic.

Creedmoor of concern to local citizens

From CBS 2:

A Queens community says it has grown impatient with some patients at a famed mental health facility near their neighborhood.

They say incident involving patients range from scary to downright gross.

Matt Kruger told CBS2’s Jessica Borg the scenes he captured in a cellphone video are the reason he’s moving out of Glen Oaks.

“No one wants to see someone’s pants down to their ankles, in broad daylight, then going to the bathroom in the middle of the street,” he said.

He showed Borg the video – too graphic for TV – that showed a man doing just that right around the corner from his home.

“It’s inappropriate,” he said. “There’s kids, there’s families.”

Aggressive panhandling is also a growing concern for neighbors of a shopping plaza on Union Turnpike.

LIJ to build Ebola unit

From Crains:

The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System is planning to build at least one containment unit for patients with Ebola and other infectious diseases, the system announced Thursday. The unit is estimated to cost $15 million, will accommodate eight patients and will take 18 months or more to build. An exact location has not yet been determined.

"In light of the public's anxiety about Ebola, it's clear that we need to develop a more permanent solution to meeting public health needs in the event of a major infectious disease outbreak in the future," said Michael Dowling, the health system's president and chief executive, in a press release announcing the project.

The new unit will be modeled after the Nebraska Medicine Biocontainment Patient Care Unit and the Serious Communicable Disease Unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, both of which have been involved in treating Ebola patients.

The new containment unit will be able to handle other infectious diseases, a spokesman for North Shore-LIJ said. "We deal with all kinds of dangerous infectious diseases," including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the H1N1 virus and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), he said. "They are very contagious, potentially fatal diseases, where if there was a widespread outbreak we should be better prepared to meet public health needs."

Really tall buildings are the price for saving hospital

From Crains:

The highest-scoring bid for Long Island College Hospital captured the support of surrounding Brooklyn communities and elbowed aside a deep field of competitors by pledging to preserve a full-service hospital at the Cobble Hill site.

But that pledge comes at a cost. The would-be real estate developers of the medical campus are counting on high-rise residential towers of a scale never before seen in an area at the heart of Brownstone Brooklyn in order to make the deal pencil out, according to emails among executives involved in the bid.

Brooklyn Health Partners envisions raising at least two soaring residential buildings of up to 50-stories on the campus of low-rise buildings that comprises LICH. BHP has plans to build a 40- to 50-story condo tower on the site of a large parking garage on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Hicks Street that is part of the LICH campus, according to emails from a financier involved in the bid and obtained by Crain's.

The building would be 80% market rate and 20% affordable. The financing group, HKS Capital Partners, indicated in the Brooklyn Health Partners proposal that it plans to raise the roughly $600 million that BHP estimates it will need to acquire the hospital, keep it running and refurbish it, as well as to develop up to 2 million square feet of residential space, according to the emails.

The BHP developers envision raising another tower that could be similar in height and size, but would feature rental apartments, 40% of which would be affordable housing.

BHP currently is negotiating with the State University of New York on a contract to buy the LICH campus. The group scored the highest number of points in a bidding process concluded by SUNY earlier this month. A coalition of community groups and unions sued the school system to revamp its bidding process for LICH, opening the door for BHP’s last round winning bid. As a result of a court settlement, the bids were scored to award higher points for proposals that included building a full-service hospital at LICH.

HHC has gigantic budget gap

From Capital New York:

The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation is facing a $430 million budget gap for fiscal year 2015, its president told the City Council’s health committee on Monday.

That gap is expected to triple to nearly $1.4 billion by 2018, said H.H.C. president Alan Aviles, who will soon be leaving the nation’s largest municipal hospital system.

The deficits can be attributed to damage from Hurricane Sandy as well as skyrocketing pension costs, but the most basic challenge is that H.H.C. treats hundreds of thousands of patients who can’t pay for the full costs of their care.

H.H.C. provides about $700 million in uncompensated care each year, and 80 percent of its patients are either on Medicaid or uninsured.

Obama as hospital savior? Maybe not

From the Daily News:

In a move expected to save three struggling Brooklyn hospitals, the Obama administration has finally agreed to let the state reinvest $8 billion in Medicaid savings into its health care system, Gov. Cuomo said Thursday.

Cuomo has repeatedly warned that without the approval, Brookdale Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center would soon shut down.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Cuomo Thursday that the feds are ready to sign off on the request.

The $8 billion is $2 billion less than the state had sought, but it’s enough to help remake the health care system, Cuomo said.

However Crains has this to say:

Disregard the political rhetoric prior to this week's tentative approval by federal health officials of an $8 billion grant to overhaul New York state's health care system.

The so-called Medicaid waiver is not going to prevent every struggling Brooklyn hospital from closing, let alone any specific hospital. It won't keep New York City's public health system in the black.

And the waiver has nothing to do with New York's insurance exchange created under Obamacare, a connection that Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly made as he pushed Washington to approve the cash infusion he had sought for 19 months.

For the average New Yorker, the $8 billion grant will actually chip away at the beloved hospitals so many community groups have battled to protect in recent years. The blunt reality of the new federal funding is that community hospitals throughout the city will lose beds. Many will be a sliver of their former selves, and newly anchored to big health care delivery systems. Access to more complex medical services will require travel to another neighborhood—or another borough.

In truth, what the $8 billion in federal money will fund can't be explained in a soundbite. That is because most of it will be funneled through the complex federal Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program, or DSRIP, embedded in similar waivers that Washington approved for New Jersey, California and Texas. The program is meant to stabilize the health care safety-net system and to cut avoidable hospitalizations and emergency-department use by 25% over the next five years.

Our ERs stink

From CBS New York:

When it comes to emergency rooms, New York tied for 13th place in a state-by-state ranking Thursday.

As 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria reported, the average waiting time to be seen and treated in an emergency room in any part of the state is more than six hours.

The overall grade for New York is a C, D’Auria reported.

Dr. Robert Glatter, spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians said that the Affordable Care Act will likely negatively impact emergency rooms.

Yet another city hospital likely to close

From Capital New York:

SUNY's board of trustees may be forced in the next two months to consider closing Downstate Medical Center, given the financial picture at Long Island College Hospital, a SUNY official said Monday.

The hospital continues to cost the state about $13 million per month and SUNY has been borrowing cash from Downstate Medical Center to pay the bills. That money isn't expected to last beyond March, said Bob Haelen, SUNY's interim Chief Financial Officer at a meeting of the trustees.

Lora Lefebvre, SUNY's associate vice chancellor for health affairs, said, “The numbers are so large that closing a campus will have to be discussed. That is going to be a difficult discussion.”

Selling the hospital won't solve all of SUNY's problem. If the property were bought for its appraised value, SUNY would still take a $300 million loss.

More hospital closings on the horizon?

From Crains:

Two events defined 2013 for New York City hospitals: the battle to keep two failing Brooklyn hospitals open, and Mount Sinai Medical Center's takeover of the former Continuum Health Partners. Closures and consolidations will again set the tone for hospitals in 2014. New York City hospitals need fewer beds—and fewer employees, too.

This isn't news to New Yorkers who have witnessed the death of St. Vincent's Hospital and other recent bankruptcies. Hospitals have been struggling with reimbursement cuts for years. But in 2014, a convergence of trends will accelerate consolidations and closings.

One trend is the way insurers are paring their network of hospitals and doctors under Obamacare. Low-priced health plans sold on the new insurance exchange are less costly because they offer a limited choice of providers, often only a quarter of the number in more traditional insurance policies. Some hospitals will find their patients steered elsewhere.

Insurers and companies that pay employee health care costs have -realized they "don't need a phone book of providers," said one hospital executive. "That is a revolution. Hospital utilization is dropping because the plan benefits are changing."

Another factor that will drive down hospitalization in 2014 is an ambitious new plan by New York state to cut the rate of avoidable hospitalizations by 25% over five years. That means shifting care from institutional settings to outpatient clinics and other alternatives.

The fall in hospital employment may begin in early 2014. Mayor Bill de Blasio may try to keep Brooklyn's money-losing Long Island College Hospital open, but the Cobble Hill facility filed a notice of mass layoffs with the state Department of Labor, specifying that 1,442 employees could lose their jobs between Jan. 21 and Feb. 3.

Likewise, bankrupt Interfaith Medical Center had been set to fire 1,545 workers late last month until the state promised funding to keep the hospital open through March 7.

Mount Sinai Health System cut 70 positions—a fraction of its 35,000 employees—shortly after its merger with Continuum, but the possibility remains that more consolidation could lie ahead.

State intervenes to aid ailing hospital

From CBS New York:

Days after an announcement that Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn would be closing, New York State gave the hospital a reprieve by committing to funding until March of next year.

As WCBS 880′s Monica Miller reported Monday night, the state agreed to fund the hospital in Bedford-Stuyvesant through March 7, according to a news release. In the meantime, state and local officials, community groups and unions have been working to secure permanent federal funding to keep the hospital open.

The hospital is now in bankruptcy proceedings.

On Friday, a hospital representative said in multiple published reports that a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge was expected to issue an order Monday announcing that the hospital was closing.

Mediation between hospital officials and creditors, unions and other parties began in November in an attempt to prevent the hospital from closing, according to published reports. But the mediation ended on Friday without any resolution, published reports said.

Kevin Finnegan, director for the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 Healthcare Workers East, expressed gratitude that the state stepped in.

Condos proposed on site of dying hospital, then plan withdrawn

From the NY Times:

Long Island College Hospital, which became a symbol of New York City’s struggling community hospitals during the mayoral race, is considering an offer to redevelop the property to include condominiums and an urgent care center.

The hospital, in Cobble Hill, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, has been emptied of all but a small number of patients over the last several months, as the State University of New York has tried to shut it down and doctors, unions and community groups have successfully sued to keep it open. The state has said it cannot afford to continue operating the hospital at a loss, but the unions have said it is needed by the community.

SUNY officials said on Monday that a developer has offered to buy the property and lease much of the block that now houses the hospital back to one or more health care providers, who would run an urgent care center, a fitness center and other non-hospital facilities. The facilities would not receive ambulance calls. Other nearby buildings — the hospital comprises about 20 structures — would be turned into condominiums.

Yes, because an urgent care center and a bunch of luxury condos makes up for the hospital that was there. Well, they changed their mind about the whole thing. Once again, it's not in Queens.

ER reopening at St. Vincent's site

From the NY Times:

A 200-foot-long shiplike structure floated into its berth on Seventh Avenue half a century ago. Unable to ignore it, Greenwich Villagers have loved or hated it ever since.

Their descendants will have the same privilege. The structure — originally the Joseph Curran Building of the National Maritime Union, then the Edward and Theresa O’Toole Medical Services Building of St. Vincent’s Hospital — is emerging in its third form, as a stand-alone emergency room and medical care center.

The O’Toole Building’s newly restored concrete facade, glowing white even on an overcast day, is a surprise. With the removal of the one-inch-square tiles that had been applied in 1966, the building has gained freshness and power. Its porthole-shaped cusps have never looked more shipshape. The prows at the West 12th Street and West 13th Street corners seem as if they could cleave a sea lane.

More surprising yet is that the building survived to see this day. In October 2008, the Landmarks Preservation Commission granted St. Vincent’s hardship application, asserting that it could not perform and sustain its charitable mission unless it were permitted to raze the O’Toole Building and replace it with a hospital tower.

St. Vincent’s closed in April 2010, before it could put its plans into effect. The hardship application was shelved. Now, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System is developing the new emergency room and medical care center by reusing the O’Toole Building and rehabilitating many of its architectural features.

Manhattan gets some health care back. Queens gets 2 stalled sites at Mary Immaculate and St. John's.

City hospitals rejecting Obamacare

From the NY Post:

ObamaCare was supposed to offer more choices — but New Yorkers shopping for medical coverage stand to be shut out of two of the city’s most prestigious hospitals.

Only three of the nine plans being offered on the New York State Health Exchange cover bills at NYU and New York-Presbyterian medical centers, The Post has learned.

Those who opt for the other six plans will either have to go elsewhere or pay steep out-of-pocket costs, officials said.

Records show that New York-Presbyterian, the largest hospital system in the nation with 2,236 beds, is an in-network choice only for the United, Emblem and Aetna plans when chosen through the exchange.

The New York University system, which as 1,069 beds at its main Langone medical facility as well as its Hospital for Joint Diseases, has deals with Affinity, Fidelis and United, and for individuals with Oxford-United for small groups.

NYU and New York-Presbyterian continue to accept most commercial health insurance that is not regulated by ObamaCare.

If there's another hurricane, we're screwed

From NY Magazine:

There was a time, not so long ago, when hurricane season had little to do with New York City. Then Hurricane Irene hit in 2011, as did Hurricane Sandy in 2012, with devastating consequences. It's impossible to know if New York will find itself staring down another major storm this summer, but NOAA has already predicted that hurricane season — which officiallly began Saturday — will be unusually strong this year. "The outlook calls for a 70% chance of an above-normal season, a 25% chance of a near-normal season, and only a 5% chance of a below-normal season," a recent NOAA report warned.

So here's the $19 billion question: Are we ready for the next Sandy?

And here's the answer: It depends, obviously, on what aspect of storm preparedness you focus on. But in general? No. Not really.

4 Brooklyn hospitals in danger of closing

From the Daily News:

Four Brooklyn hospitals are in danger of closing within a year unless the state gets help from the feds, Gov. Cuomo warned the Obama administration in a letter this week.

The state still hasn’t heard whether the feds will sign off on a waiver request from last August that would allow New York to use $10 billion of $17.5 billion in Medicaid savings it expects to achieve over the next five years to help restructure the state’s outdated health system for the poor.

Cuomo sent a letter this week to US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking for quick action.

“Due to a rapid deterioration in the financial status of essential components of the health care services system in Brooklyn, if nothing is done within the next 12 months, the outcome will be disastrous,” he wrote.

Without the waiver, he said, at least four hospitals with nearly 1,000 inpatient beds and hundreds of thousands emergency room and ambulatory care visits will be in danger of closing.

Cuomo aides said the four are Long Island College Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center, Brookdale Medical Center, and SUNY Downstate/Brooklyn.

Mt. Sinai about to grow

From the Daily News:

The state Health Department has approved a major facelift of a western Queens hospital.

Mount Sinai Hospital Queens in Long Island City is moving forward with a sweeping $113 million expansion that would erect a state-of-the-art five-story medical building on its campus.

“We need a medical facility to accommodate the growing neighborhood,” Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas told the Daily News on Monday. “There are many young families moving in.”

The state issued a contingent approval letter last month, an important hurdle before construction can begin on the facility, agency officials said.

The operator, which is part of the larger Mount Sinai hospital network, will still have to submit legal documentation to the agency before final approval, Health Department spokesman Peter Constantakes said.

“The project will provide significant improvements to emergency and urgent services, imaging, endoscopy, ambulatory surgery, physician space, operating rooms and patient support spaces,” according to an executive summary prepared following an April hearing.

The hospital expects to break ground in September and complete construction in 2016.

A coalition of nine elected officials have been pushing for approval since 2012.

Long Island Sounds like B.S.

From the NY Times:

New York City’s health commissioner ardently defended the city’s decision not to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes before Hurricane Sandy, facing down withering questions Thursday from City Council members who contended that some old people may have died as a result.

The commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, said that the city and state health commissioners — ultimately reporting to the mayor — had made the best decision they could using information from the National Weather Service, which he said initially showed the brunt of the storm hitting Long Island Sound.

By the time on Sunday that it was clear the storm was threatening the city more directly, he said, “We couldn’t have accomplished the evacuation of everybody in Zone A before zero hour,” which appeared to be as early as midnight.

Part of Long Island Sound lies between Queens and the Bronx, so a storm surge should have been expected regardless of where along the Sound the storm touched down. Plus, the hurricane would obviously have had to pass over land before reaching Long Island Sound. (Makes me wonder if the health commissioner, city council and NY Times know where LI Sound actually is, since this was not explored further.) And how is it that City officials got different information from the National Weather Service than every media outlet that reported on the storm? I recall phrases like, "storm of the century" and maps showing the amazing width of the storm well before midnight, all of them showing a direct hit on NYC.

Of course, the decision to not evacuate had more to do with piss-poor planning: there was no place to send the evacuees and it cost a lot of money that the administration didn't want to spend. And despite the nonsense Farley spewed during this dog-and-pony show, people DID die after being evacuated, because the places they were sent were not prepared to take care of them. Here's what some of them are going through now. Sad, isn't it?

Another hospital closure?

From the NY Post:

Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn faces closure -- just two years after the state approved a merger to save the financially ailing 155-year old facility, source told the Post.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, which acquired LICH in 2011, has sent out word that its eying shutting down the Cobble Hill hospital — the only one that provides emergency room service in Brownstone Brooklyn.

A New York State Nurses Association rep visited the hospital to warn staffers that the hospital could close as soon as March 15.

New hospital building is causing problems

From DNA Info:

A group of Astoria neighbors says the construction of a massive eight-story medical facility in the neighborhood is putting their buildings on life support and might endanger residents' health.

The 53,993-square foot building at 23-25 31st St. abuts the backyards of several houses on 32nd Street, and a portion of it was mistakenly built 10 feet closer to the properties than zoning regulations allow, according to city records.

For the last several years, residents on 32nd Street have fought against the project, saying construction errors have caused damage to the foundations of their homes, which they say shifted and cracked.

Neighbors say their latest trial is the discovery that the developer, Pali Realty, has confirmed plans to install mechanical equipment — including exhaust vents for a 134-car parking garage — in the space directly behind their backyard patios and gardens.

According to the developer, the building was mistakenly built according to outdated zoning.

The developers are now applying for a special city permit to legalize the rear yard and continue construction of the site, with their application set to be reviewed by the Board of Standards and Appeals in the coming months.

So what does Vallone have to say about this?