CIR Comments on Impact of Caritas Closures on other Queens Hospitals

When Caritas Health Care announced it would close two Queens hospitals in February with little warning and no transition plan, CIR warned that neighboring hospitals were already overwhelmed and overcrowded and couldn’t handle the loss of more hospital beds.  Despite a huge outcry from the community and elected officials, the hospitals closed at the end of February, 2009.

Now, a report issued by New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. on June 1, 2009 substantiates the devastating impact of these closures on the community. Thompson calls on the State Department of Health and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to address the concerns facing the remaining hospitals in Queens due to the loss of St. John’s Queens and Mary Immaculate Hospitals. The outbreak of the H1N1 virus has made these issues even more urgent, Thompson says.

Central to Thompson’s investigation were interviews with CIR members about how their hospitals have handled the excess patient load from St. John’s Queens and Mary Immaculate.

About 200 CIR members were employed at the two hospitals.  CIR worked hard to help residents find placements at area hospitals where they could complete their residencies, and the vast majority were successful in finding new positions. Many of them are now at nearby hospitals like Jamaica and Flushing Hospitals, which are seeing huge increases in Emergency Room visits.

The comptroller’s report quotes CIR President Dr. L. Toni Lewis, a former Caritas resident, on the impact the hospital closures are having on patients.

“As Dr. Toni Lewis, President of CIR, stated, ‘Because the ERs are full, everyone is waiting longer and coming in sicker. This is only going to snowball.’”

The Comptroller’s office released the results of its investigation in hopes of preventing future crises.

“What we are seeing now is a crisis in the hospital and healthcare system in much of Queens, particularly for safety net hospitals which tend to treat a higher proportion of uninsured or under-insured patients,” the report says. “A similar scenario may repeat itself if H1N1 virus outbreaks appear in other boroughs. To be sure, while the timing of the H1N1 virus itself was not foreseeable, the likelihood of some event of a similar nature causing a sudden surge in demand was both foreseeable and inevitable.”

In New York City and around the country, CIR is engaged in fights to protect and strengthen safety-net hospitals, as the number of uninsured or underinsured increases and drives more people to emergency rooms.