OPINION: Is SUNY just being ornery?

April 28, 2014 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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It looks like SUNY Downstate Medical Center is jumping the gun in its haste to exit Long Island College Hospital (LICH).

Mary Frost’s recent article about the SUNY-LICH situation revealed that a letter addressed to patients and signed by Michael Miller, interim CEO of LICH, said that the hospital will not be accepting ambulances starting Monday, May 12 at 7 a.m. Miller’s letter said the ambulance diversion is “taking place due to the scheduled closure of the hospital on May 22,” and that walk-in patients will receive medical screening and stabilizing treatment until that time.

Excuse me, but I thought that the whole idea of the recent plan for LICH was to avoid precisely such situations – situations like someone suffering from a heart attack having to be taken to an emergency room 20 miles away. I was also under the impression that a new operator for the hospital, namely Brooklyn Health Partners, had tentatively been chosen.

Frost reported that “Nurses and other health care workers say that SUNY has been prematurely closing down departments, eliminating personnel and removing equipment for weeks, and the ambulance diversion is just the latest salvo that may leave LICH floundering before a new group can take it over.”

Let’s leave the hospital world for awhile and take a look at another world – the political arena.  When former Mayor Michael Bloomberg left office, did he fire all the City Hall staff, strip all the paintings from the walls and the rugs from the floors, have all the furniture and computers trucked away, disconnect the phones, and then turn to Bill de Blasio and say, with a smirk, “Good luck?”

No, he didn’t. He and de Blasio both had transition teams to make sure that the transition from one administration to another didn’t negatively impact the public any more than it had to. Even politicians who are almost completely opposed to each other’s policies, like President Bush and President Obama, have the decency to follow a smooth, professional transition strategy. But maybe our hospital friends haven’t gotten the message.

SUNY spokesperson David Doyle told the Eagle on Friday, “As agreed to by all parties and mandated by the court, SUNY will exit the operation of Long Island College Hospital on May 22nd.  … Our initial position was May 7 but the petitioners insisted on a later date and we agreed to extend to May 22 by mitigating costs, so we obliged the petitioners. And as I said before, implicit in any hospital closure is a winding down for the single purpose of patient safety.”

Well, according to Frost’s article, only three nurses’ aides were reportedly working in the ER over the April 22 weekend, and no nurses’ aids in the ICU that Sunday. To me, this would seem to jeopardize the public safety, not to honor it.

Thankfully, lawyers for the LICH patients and medical staff, community groups and the Public Advocate’s Offices, led by Jim Walden of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, are investigating legal action. Walden pointed out that SUNY did not negotiate for the right to stop ambulances on May 22, and that one of the judges involved in the case ordered on Feb. 1 that SUNY needs to maintain “the current legal services at LICH” until the closure date of May 22.

Without delay, SUNY and Brooklyn Health Partners need to get together and map out a transition strategy that is as seamless as possible.

 

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