Saw a line of red-capped NYSNA members streaming into the main entrance of St. Vincent's. They carried laminated signs that said "Save St. Vincent's."Photo: My union dues at work.
A little background from the NY Times:
The Greenwich Village institution, which is $700 million in debt and in danger of bankruptcy, has not found a partner and has stopped admitting some patients.
I find this beyond the union's purview. If the hospital stops serving the needs of the immediate community, then it won't survive. It has served Greenwich Village well when the AIDS crisis hit the neighborhood hard. Between it and Bellevue, they were at the forefront of that modern plague. My soft spot for St. Vincent's stems from that. The nuns during those times must have felt like their predecessors centuries ago, tending to victims of ancient plagues. I'm sure the hospital's nurses must have felt that as well. This is a guess: but the hospital has been riding that goodwill for a long time. The population who bestowed them all that good will are dwindling. The community has changed. Its new residents are moneyed and younger and their first choice for primary care and non-emergent surgery is probably not St. Vincent's. Being a Catholic hospital may have something to do with it as well. Do consumers choose which hospital to go to based on its strong religious affiliation? Maybe. And the hospital's heart, its duty to provide the underserved and survive in an urban economy, is part of its undoing. New York has "safety net" providers and St. Vincent's is not one of them. It thinks it is, but it isn't.
I am for saving St. Vincent's. That area of Manhattan needs a hospital. Without it, the nearest E.R. would be all the way on the East Side, all the way downtown, or St. Luke's Roosevelt in the upper 50s. To save itself, St. Vincent's needs to engage the community boards in its neighborhood and assess what they need. March with time and enhance the quality of care (I would emphasize technology here or add specialties - e.g. be a Stroke Center). The other solution is for HHC to swallow it up and become a full-fledged "safety net" provider. We're helping to bail them out, anyway.
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