Monday, July 25, 2011

Quinn to City : Drop Dead

Queens' Peninsula Hospital Center set to close ; New York Downtown Hospital putting patients on stretchers in the hallway to accommodate unmanageable influx of emergency patients.

Christine Quinn to City : Drop Dead

"Sources say the Far Rockaway, Queens, hospital will shutter after owing millions to vendors and falling behind on its union benefits funds payments; the closure would cost the area about 1,000 jobs," reported Crain's.

The Queens Crap blog published a post today, indicating that Peninsula Hospital Center had filed a 90-day closure plan, a requirement under the law that was violated when St. Vincent's Hospital closed on April 30, 2010.

Is our social safety net not too big to fail ?

Does nobody in City Council have any concern about the financial collapse of so many hospitals across all five New York City boroughs ?

Does State Sen. Tom Duane not care, either ?

Meanwhile, following the illegal closing of St. Vincent's Hospital last year, there reamins only one hospital south of 16th Street in Manhattan, New York Downtown Hospital, which The New York Post has reported as being ''overwhelmed,'' and is leading to an ''emergency-care crisis,'' the newspaper reports.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

St. Vincent's Document Shredding

Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia Morris has let the management of St. Vincent's avoid Freedom of Information requests and has let the Rudin Family to gut St. Vincent's and is about to let the Family take a wrecking ball to it. Now, Judge Morris is going to let the Management and the Family destroy evidence.

Management of St. Vincent's Asks Bankruptcy Court to Approve Document Destruction, So That No Investigation Can Ever Determine Why the Hospital Closed Abruptly And Without Any Legally-Mandated Closure Plan.

No politician -- not CB2 Chair Brad Hoylman, not City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or Senator Tom Duane -- is willing to do anything to prevent the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's. With the shredding trucks about to pull into the ambulance bays of St. Vincent's, the obstruction of justice will be complete : there may be no more hope to ever investigate the shady decisions that lead the hospital to close on April 30, 2010. It's exactly as Sarah Jessica Parker said : ''The community needs a hospital — and I think there’s been some clever obfuscation.''

1782-Motion Re Info Mgmt Services and Trust Ageement and Document Retention Plan

Monday, July 4, 2011

Duane CB2 St. Vincent's Meeting

Under the cover of darkness, over a holiday weekend, and in usual opaque fashion, Community Board 2 announced with very short notice a meeting for tomorrow that will keep pushing a first aid clinic to replace St. Vincent's Hospital.

In spite of the Lower West Side's united demand that North Shore-LIJ open a hospital to replace St. Vincent's, Community Board 2 keeps its head buried up the ass of the Rudin Family.

JOINT LANDMARKS & PUBLIC AESTHETICS & ST. VINCENT’S OMNIBUS : Tues., 7/5 @ 6:30 PM– NYU Silver Building, 32 Waverly Pl. Room 208 - 30 Seventh Avenue (O’Toole Building) - Application for façade changes and new entrances. For more information go to: http://bit.ly/iNUSWj

Duane St. Vincent's Hardship Exemption

Community Activist Yetta Kurland presented a stack of over 7,500 signatures on a petition to a representative of the Rudin development family. The petition demands that the Rudin Family must be blocked from undertaking a luxury condominium conversion of the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital. In her presentation, Ms. Kurland explained the history of a prior deal that gave the Rudin Family use of a hardship exemption, but, which Ms. Kurland said, no longer applies. As William Rudin salivates over the condo conversion deal, Jane Jacobs is turning in her grave.

Too bad we can't count on Tom Duane to fight for the healthcare of her own community.

Duane St. Vincent's Medical Malpractice

Eileen Dunn, R.N., tells residents of the Lower West Side of Manhattan that Mayor Michael Bloomberg put the ''knife to the chest'' of St. Vincent's Hospital, and that the mayor is responsible for blocking the restoration of a hospital to the Lower West Side.

Nurse Dunn also said that the municipal governments in Miami, Florida, and Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, either forbid ambulances from taking emergency patients to the kinds of first aid clinics that Lenox Hill plans to build at the O'Toole Building in the West Village, or forbid to license such first aid clinics altogether.

Too bad we can't count on Tom Duane to do the right thing -- and fight for a full-service hospital to replace St. Vincent's.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Sarah Jessica Parker : We hope that Tom Duane reads Sarah's Interview About the Need For a New Hospital in the West Village

Sarah Jessica Parker endorses a Full-Service Hospital to replace St. Vincent's.

In an interview with The Villager newspaper, Sarah Jessica Parker expressed her support for a full-service hospital to replace St. Vincent's.

''Asked what she thought of the latest post-St. Vincent’s proposal, for an emergency-care facility at the site of the former hospital’s O’Toole building, the Sex and the City star looked skeptical. 'I’m concerned, let’s put it that way,' she said. 'The community needs a hospital — and I think there’s been some clever obfuscation.' As a parent of three young children, she noted, she’s especially concerned about local healthcare. 'I would like to see a proper, functioning [hospital] — not a walk-in,' she stressed. She said she had spoken to Council Speaker Christine Quinn about the issue.''

The interview given by Ms. Parker took place before information came to light about a deceptive political campaign brochure, which was mailed to residents of the Lower West Side by a front group calling itself the ''Westside Healthcare Coalition.'' A WhoIs search on Network Solutions today showed that the website for the front group is registered to Mehigan, Bellone & Associates, Inc. Whereas Ms. Parker was not directly speaking to the example of the campaign brochure as political subterfuge, you can see how she has already been concerned with the pattern of clever obfuscation.

North Shore-LIJ have a vested interest in installing a first aid clinic in the O'Toole Building in the West Village, so that the Rudin Family can build luxury condominiums on the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital. Meanwhile, watch this video about what having a full-service hospital in the Lower West Side means to one parent, whose child was treated by the live-saving emergency room at St. Vincent's Hospital :

St. Vincent's 9/11 Tribute

I Will Wait For You -- St. Vincent's Hospital -- RIP 9-11 Tribute

Jane Jacobs would have saved St. Vincent's Hospital. Too bad Sen. Tom Duane couldn't.