Hospital Closures and Medicaid Shifts Took Toll on NYC’s Health... DATE 2017

City limits ^ | January 4, 2017 | Ruth Ford

[Hojczyk]

Of all the answers that surprised the survey gatherers for the Brooklyn Health Improvement Project, the most surprising one was also the simplest: It was easier and more convenient to sit in an ER waiting room than to try and find a doctor who would see them and help them the same day. It was easier to sit and wait in one place than to be bounced around by phone, put on hold or put off entirely. The added benefit of the ER waiting room: It was near the hospital specialists, labs, pharmacies and outpatient clinics. Rather than travel all over to see an internist, get blood work done, get into the radiologist for a CAT scan, any follow-up you needed could be done the same day or soon after, in the same place. Like getting food for the week, back-to-school clothes and a new bike at Target—getting all your health care needs met at the hospital just made sense.

Until, that is, the city started closing them. Since 2003, 16 hospitals have closed around New York City, four in Brooklyn alone, putting more and more pressure on the remaining hospitals to see more patients under more crowded and facility-challenged conditions. For families living in poor neighborhoods, more hospital closings have put greater pressure on the surviving facilities, and they have also stretched the distances people have to travel to receive care.

For Judy Wessler, a long-time health care advocate, the hospital closings and consolidations were compounded by the state cuts to Medicaid reimbursement in 2012, exacerbating the financial fragility of the safety-net hospitals and putting care, and jobs, in jeopardy, something, she says, the state has not taken fully into account.

[Hojczyk]

Looks like Cuomo closed a lot of hospitals hoping to save medicaid..

[snarkytart]

The left destroys everything it touches. All in the name of their low life voters.

[Oldexpat]

So they take in thousands of illegals and welfare cases and are surprised when they run out of other people’s money taking care of them.

[ronnie raygun]

Sancturay cities add to the rot already injected by their overlords