Hospital Departure Causes Health Vacuum
Greenwich Village emergency care continues to suck
Monday, September 27th, 2010
The proposed urgent care clinic, supposed to help compensate for the loss of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the West Village, has been moved eight blocks north to West 20th Street, from its original planned location at the former St. Vincent’s emergency room.
A protester stands outside of St. Vincent's to rally support for a neighborhood hospital. Photo by Yumna Al-Arashi
“It’s quite frankly terrifying how clearly the community’s need is not met,” said Yetta Kurland, who is running for the City Council seat in the third district. “Nothing short of shocking. These are services desperately needed in the community.”
The planned clinic is administered by North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, who said in a statement it could open in the early fall “if approved by the state.” The facility was originally supposed to be located in the St. Vincent’s emergency room after a planned renovation. According to The New York Times, the plan was scrapped when St. Vincent’s and North Shore-L.I.J. officials were unable to resolve an ideological disagreement. St. Vincent’s, a Catholic institution, insisted that the clinic couldn’t discuss issues like birth control and abortion with patients because it conflicted with church doctrine.
Terry Lynam, spokesperson for North Shore, disagreed with the Times reports and cited different reasons for the move. “[St. Vincent’s] was viewed only as a temporary location,” he said. “Once it had found a buyer, we would have had to relocate.”
After filing for bankruptcy under the weight of crippling debts, St. Vincent’s closed its doors this April. Talks began almost immediately to replace the hospital with an urgent care center that would help lessen the blow felt by the West Village and its surrounding neighborhoods after the loss. The 161-year-old Catholic institution, located at the corner of West 12th Street and Seventh Avenue at St. Vincent’s Square, was the last full-service medical facility on the lower west side. It served many of the poor, homeless and uninsured citizens of the Village and its surrounding neighborhoods, and was the primary medical center used in the emergency response to 9/11. In the wake of its demise, no medical facilities are close enough to the citizens of an area that spans from the Financial District to Midtown, stretching east to the East Village.
According to North Shore, the health care provider was awarded a $9.4 million grant by the state to serve the Village area but the move eight blocks north only raises more questions about the clinic’s commitment to that goal. “The intent of the grant [provided by the state to North Shore] was to open an urgent care center to compensate for St. Vincent’s,” said Lynam, “and we recognize it won’t fill the entire void. But we want to make these services available to the community.”
Kurland, a civil rights attorney who last month filed a freedom of information lawsuit seeking the release of St. Vincent’s financial records to the public, is skeptical about the new clinic’s capability to fill the hole left by the departure of St. Vincent’s. “St. Vincent’s had a Level 1 trauma center — it could accommodate people in natural disasters,” she told the Free Press. “There are doubts as to whether or not emergency care and pediatric care are going to be available to the general public at the urgent care center.”
Her opponent in the third district race, the incumbent City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, was not available for comment, though she released a statement saying that “the west side of Manhattan still needs a full service emergency room and hospital,” though adding the clinic is “a good intermediary step.”
“As of now, we don’t have the necessary health services in my neighborhood on the west side,” Kurland admitted. “St. Vincent’s was a complex network of health care developed over the course of a century and a half; a medical institution that was shuttered and collapsed in a matter of days. It was clearly a violation of public health laws,” she said, adding that there will be a rally at St. Vincent’s on October 17 to commemorate the west side’s “100 Days without a Hospital.”
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