By Albert Amateau
Borough President Scott Stringer told more than 100 people at a Coalition for a New Village Hospital forum in Chelsea last week that he would work with activists seeking to bring a full-service hospital back to the site of the venerable St. Vincent’s Medical Center, which closed 10 months ago.
Among the activists at the Wed., Feb. 16, forum was a large delegation from Hands Off St. Vincent’s, a direct-action group, some of whose members spent 26 hours locked up in The Tombs earlier this month after being arrested at a Feb. 8 demonstration inside a St. Vincent’s building.
One member of Hands Off challenged Stringer to support what activists are calling a “land lock” proposal to restrict future use of the former St. Vincent’s Seventh Ave. property to health services. Although no land lock provision exists in the city zoning code, Stringer indicated he would include even that dubious strategy in his talks with St. Vincent’s activists.
Speakers at the forum acknowledged the long odds against resuscitating St. Vincent’s, whose Village campus is under the jurisdiction of federal Bankruptcy Court Judge Cecilia Morris; but they vowed to carry on the fight for a new Greenwich Village hospital.
“We’re at a critical point, but we cannot give up,” said Yetta Kurland, a founder of the Coalition for a New Village Hospital. “We need a full-service hospital offering Level 1 trauma care on the St. Vincent’s site and we need it now,” Kurland said, adding that even if the now-vacant hospital property on Seventh Ave. and W. 12th St. were sold tomorrow, the coalition would continue to fight. “This isn’t a sprint, this is a marathon,” said Kurland, urging advocates to persevere over the long haul.
While the hospital’s entire contents were sold in December and the Bankruptcy Court has approved CB Richard Ellis, a real estate broker, as a marketing agent, the buildings themselves have not yet been sold.
Kurland said she hopes to get 3,000 people demonstrating in front of St. Vincent’s on April 30, the one-year anniversary of the closing of the hospital.
A similar, Hands Around St. Vincent’s rally Kurland held last June — two months after the hospital closed — drew 125 people.
“If people in Egypt can get up and change their government, we can get a hospital,” said Velma Hill, vice president of Chelsea Midtown Democrats and a civil rights and union advocate.
Dr. David Kaufman, a St. Vincent’s physician, said he and Eileen Dunn, representing St. Vincent’s members of the New York State Nurses Association, have been attending meetings of the Community Health Assessment Steering Committee at Hunter College during the past few weeks. Kaufman quoted Jeff Kraut, a committee member from North Shore-Long Island Jewish Hospital, as saying recently that Lower Manhattan needs a full-service hospital.
Following the closing of St. Vincent’s, the state Department of Health designated North Shore-L.I.J. to establish an urgent-care facility. In September, North Shore-L.I.J. agreed to establish the center in a building owned by VillageCare at 121A W. 20th St. where VillageCare currently has a primary-care clinic.
The Health Assessment Steering Committee intends to make a report soon assessing healthcare in the wake of St. Vincent’s closing.
Evette Stark-Katz, a member of Hands Off St. Vincent’s, told the Feb. 16 forum that Hands Off intends to present individual healthcare assessments at the Feb. 23 committee meeting at Hunter College on E. 68th St.
Kaufman and others insisted that the closing of St. Vincent’s — which served more than 240,000 patients annually and had 3,500 employees — had a devastating impact on healthcare in the area, with most of the burden falling on low-income patients. Moreover, since St. Vincent’s closed, Beth Israel Hospital on E. 16th St. has had four times the number of emergency room patients, Bellevue Hospital on E. 27th St. has seen its E.R. patients triple, and the E.R. intake at Roosevelt Hospital on W. 59th St. and 10th Ave. has doubled, Kaufman said.
Tom Shanahan, a lawyer associated with Kurland in the coalition, recalled newspaper articles in 2008 about plans for a 60-story medical building in the proposed Hudson Yards project between 30th and 34th Sts., and10th and 12th Aves.
“We need to ask whether a hospital will be located in the Village or Hudson Yards,” he told the Feb. 16 forum. “We also have to ask who controls land use here — the Bankruptcy Court or the city — and we have to know if a land lock is possible,” he said.
Shanahan noted that the state Department of Health recently “found” $683 million to save Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. “Why not St. Vincent’s?” he asked.
However, St. Vincent’s bankruptcy debts are estimated at $1 billion.
The loss of St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers is symptomatic of healthcare throughout the city, said Carmen Acosta, of Local 1199 / Service Employees International Union, which represents healthcare workers.
“There isn’t one hospital in the city that’s not on the verge of going down,” said Acosta. She noted the closings of St. John’s Hospital and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Queens and North General Hospital in Manhattan, in addition to St. Vincent’s.
Stringer noted that Harlem Hospital neighbors are protesting a downsizing. Local 1199 is collecting personal stories of people affected by the hospital closings at www.healthcareeducationproject.org/story and intends to deliver them to legislative leaders in Albany.
On a brighter note, Nigel Nicholls, representing ARUP, an international engineering firm with several hospital clients, said that even though the contents of St. Vincent’s have been sold, the remaining buildings could be restored to hospital use relatively easily. The restoration, of course, would depend on political will, legal issues and the unlikely rescue of the property from bankruptcy creditors.
