Worry over future of St. John's Episcopal

From CBS New York:

The Rockaway Peninsula lost Peninsula Hospital to economic pressure in 2012. St. John’s is facing similar pressure.

More than half of the patients at St. John’s are on Medicaid, which means that the hospital has been losing money for a long time. The new Federal Affordable Care Act could worsen the money crunch.

St. John’s has 257 beds and a busy emergency room that is jammed with patients. It’s the only emergency room in that part of the city.

“There’s about 150,000 people here. We are it,” explained CEO Richard Brown.

For many people the hospital could be the difference between life and death.

Officials are hopeful that the state won’t let the hospital die and are pushing for extra aid from Albany. Hospital management is hoping to sell off its nursing homes and find a white knight.

Read More

Yet another Queens hospital closing, another on critical list

From the Queens Courier:

Health care in the borough continues to flatline one facility at a time, with Holliswood Hospital the latest to shutter its doors.

The 127-bed private psychiatric hospital in Jamaica closed on Monday, August 12 due to financial troubles, said a hospital official. Current patients will begin to be discharged, and after an estimated one to two weeks, the site will close permanently.

After Holliswood shuts off the lights, nearly 400 employees will have to look for work elsewhere, according to the borough president’s office. Some already have replacement jobs, but others do not, said hospital security guard Leroy Walker.

Walker, who has worked at the center for eight years, said the staff was informed on Friday, August 2 that the facility will close in less than two weeks.

Holliswood Hospital will let 376 employees go, including nurses, mental health technicians, nurse practitioners, occupational therapists, pharmacists, psychologists and more. The largest single group consists of 58 registered nurses, said the borough president’s office.

Starting in April, Holliswood began negotiating with PSCH, Inc., a local nonprofit provider, to receive interim financing for the facility. However, the parties were unable to resolve “certain substantive deal terms and terminated negotiations” in late July, according to hospital officials.

Without additional funds, the facility “did not have the financial resources to keep the hospital open.”

This is the sixth hospital to close in the borough in the last decade following Parkway, St. John’s Queens, Mary Immaculate, Peninsula and St. Joseph’s.

From the Daily News:

The only hospital on the Rockaway Peninsula is in critical condition after the closure of units and growing uncertainty surrounding the facility’s finances.

The 257-bed St. John’s Episcopal Hospital recently outsourced several of its clinics and closed its detox unit as cost-saving measure — and union and hospital officials will protest Wednesday outside the Far Rockaway medical center to slam the management’s “short-sided” approach to fixing its balance sheet.

“If you keep chopping away at services and staffing, quality is going to suffer,” said nurse Iona Folkes.

The hospital’s dialysis unit could also shutter, union officials said.

If the hospital closes, Rockaway residents would have to venture to Jamaica Hospital, Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, or South Shore Hospital in Long Island in an emergency.

They're also closing immunization clinics.

Read More