CIR President Speaks at Disparities Conference

In early 2009, CIR rallied with community members and healthcare workers to stop the closure of St. John’s Queens Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital, run by Caritas Healthcare. Despite political pressure, frantic negotiations and a public outcry to keep them open, both hospitals closed, leaving a huge void among the people who depended on the institutions for jobs and health care.

Neighboring hospitals – including Flushing, Jamaica and Elmhurst – are still struggling to accommodate the flow of patients who were formerly served by the closed hospitals.

At a conference hosted by the Healthcare Education Project in December 2009, CIR President Dr. L. Toni Lewis spoke about the closures not only from the perspective of the hundreds of CIR doctors at the hospitals but from her experience; her own residency was spent in the hospitals.

Dr. Lewis’ panel addressed the threats to safety net hospitals and the disproportionate impact on communities of color. She described the climate among hospital workers and the community at the two Queens hospitals.

“The work we’re doing today is not about numbers, it’s not about money, it’s not about health care reform,” Dr. Lewis said. “It’s about lives.” Dr. Lewis was joined on the panel by Lloyd Bishop from the Greater New York Hospital Association, Medisys President David Rosen, and Kalahn Taylor Clark from the Brookings Institution. She also appeared in a short documentary about the campaign to prevent the Caritas closures last year that was shown to conference attendees.

The financial crisis that shut down St. John’s and Mary Immaculate is ongoing, and its impact is still being felt in New York and across the country. New York State has lost 44 hospitals since 1990.