Will Your Hospital Be There When You Need It the Most?

New York’s hospitals are in financial peril and, despite the critical services they provide, hospitals have been the target of huge funding cuts year after year. With the closing of Mary Immaculate, St. John’s Queens, and, most recently, the inpatient services at St. Vincent’s, New Yorkers need to start asking, “Will my hospital be there when I need it?”

An example of that “need” was evident in 2009 with the spring outbreak of H1N1influenza aka “swine flu.” When news spread about 200 Queens high school students becoming sick with a flu-like illness, thousands of New Yorkers rushed to emergency departments throughout the Greater New York area. Though the visits were unexpected, hospitals in the area stepped up and treated the influx of patients, most of whom were thankfully not seriously ill.

“I think we were a little surprised at how many people were coming to emergency rooms. And the emergency rooms handled them — it wasn’t a major problem, but it was a problem,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, New York City’s Health Commissioner, in a July 21, 2009, New York Times  article.

The increase in visits, reported the Times,was significant: between May 15 and June 15, 2009, emergency departments in the City had more than 100,000 additional people than the same period in 2008. To put it another way, there were approximately 325,000 emergency room visits for that period in 2008, and approximately 428,000 in 2009.

Hospitals, and specifically emergency departments, became the hub of addressing H1N1 concerns. “Hospital emergency departments saw large increases in patient volume during the H1N1 outbreak of spring 2009. Very few of these patients with influenza symptoms required hospital care, but many sought care in emergency departments because they lacked other alternatives or simply lacked awareness of them,” said a September 1, 2009, press release  from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office.

Hospitals are vital community resources during any public health emergency, as we saw during the H1N1 outbreak. But several of New York’s hospitals—perhaps your community hospital—have closed, and even more hospitals are at risk. What if New York has another widespread influenza outbreak?  Or a large disaster or emergency—even a building fire?

Where will you go?  

Will your community hospital be open and ready to help your family?

Take action to prevent health care cuts and preserve hospitals.  Join HEP today.