Healy makes plea to save Greenville

Friday, March 28, 2008
By KEN THORBOURNE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy might be taking the state to court to keep Greenville Hospital open.

Healy notified the state in a letter this week he is appealing Monday's decision by state Commissioner of Health and Senior Services Heather Howard to allow Greenville Hospital to close on April 23.

If Howard doesn't respond favorably to the March 25 letter, the city would file a formal appeal in state appellate court, said the city's top attorney, Bill Matsikoudis.

In the letter, Healy asserts that Greenville's closure "would result in immediate and irreparable harm to the general health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Jersey City, particularly those living on the city's west and southwestern sections."

At a minimum the mayor asks for "a greater period of time in which to find a buyer to step in and provide vital (medical) care."

Extra time to find a buyer helped save the Bayonne Medical Center, Healy points out in his letter. He also says the city is planning to add upwards of 8,000 units of housing on the west side of the city near Greenville Hospital.

Department of Health and Senior Services spokeswoman Linda Nasta confirmed her agency has received Healy's letter, but said the letter didn't represent a formal appeal.

"The department has not been notified about a formal appeal filed pursuant to court rule," Nasta said.

Howard signed off on the closing Monday following a long and fierce battle mounted by local elected officials and community residents who campaigned to keep the hospital open despite the plans by officials of LibertyHealth Systems Inc., the hospital's owner, to close it.

LibertyHealth officials maintain Greenville Hospital is losing $3 million a year and draining resources from its network's two other hospitals - the Jersey City Medical Center and Meadowlands Hospital in Secaucus.

Greenville Hospital is saved - for now

State health board puts off recommendation to close

Ricardo Kaulessar
Reporter staff writer

Greenville Hospital has two deadlines: Six months if Jersey City can come up with $1.5 million to keep it open, or 90 days if the city can't.

That was the outcome of a hearing at the Hyatt Regency in Princeton Thursday, when the NJ State Health Planning Board convened to make a determination on the closing of the 100-bed hospital located in the southern part of Jersey City.

LibertyHealth Systems, the organization that operates Greenville Hospital, has looked to close it since April, citing a $3 million deficit. LibertyHealth also claims a duplication of medical services offered by the Jersey City Medical Center, the other Jersey City hospital it operates.

The company filed a certificate of need application with the NJ Department of Health and Human Services to close the hospital. If the board decided that the hospital should be closed, members would have recommended their decision to the state's Health Commissioner Fred Jacobs.

Instead, the board took Mayor Jerramiah Healy up on his offer made during the meeting to commit $1.5 million to keep the hospital open for another six months. But the board added a condition: if the city did not produce the money within 90 days, they will convene another meeting to decide whether or not to recommend closing Greenville Hospital.

The board made the decision after four hours of hearing public comments which unanimously opposed closure, as well as presentations from those who advocated for closing.

The result was that the 200 people who showed up to save Greenville Hospital got something of a minor miracle. And it didn't go unappreciated, as members of the public offered rousing applause and handshakes to the board members.

After the meeting, Healy was happy, but remained realistic about the board's decision.

"Today, the decision bought extra time," Healy said. "Now we must work with the city's business administrator and the City Council to locate additional funds to try to keep Greenville Hospital open."

Just some more time and accuracy

For those who wanted the hospital to stay open, one key word was time.

Mayor Healy and other officials at the meeting pleaded with the health board to offer a little more time before they made a decision, to allow Jersey City government to work with elected officials on county, state and federal levels to find fiscal and operational solutions to keep the hospital alive.

For officials, and especially for patients, it was the time that would be tacked on if they had to travel the extra three miles to the Jersey City Medical Center. It could make the difference between life and death, some said as they cited the problems with daily traffic and the decreases in public transportation.

That was the sentiment expressed by local resident Linda Jackson, who credited Greenville Hospital for saving her life when she suffered from a staph infection. She claimed she could have had tougher time she had to travel to the Medical Center.

"My health does not depend on a clock," Jackson said. The other word bandied about during the meeting was inaccurate.

As in state Senator-elect Sandra Bolden Cunningham made a plea for the board to delay their decision, she said testimony from a number of speakers at the meeting would shed light on "a lot of inaccurate and misleading information" in the certificate of need filed by LibertyHealth.

Lorenzo Richardson, aide to City Councilwoman Viola Richardson (also a relative), pointed out that by closing the Greenville Hospital, LibertyHealth has projected spending $6 million total for retirement benefits and the commercial mortgage of the hospital building if they close - twice the amount of the hospital's deficit. It doesn't "add up," he said. He also added that other information provided by LibertyHealth to close Greenville Hospital, ranging from the claims of duplication of services and the convenience of public transportation for patients to travel to other hospitals, should be scrutinized further.

Still making his case

After the hearing ended, LibertyHealth CEO Stephen Kirby tried to mask his frustration when he was told that plans to close the hospital would have to wait. He decided to play the role of the good sport.

"I'll work with Mayor Healy starting tomorrow, and will continue to work with him if he can put up the $1.5 million," Kirby said. "But even if the hospital survives, it won't be an acute care facility because there would be too many beds."

Kirby also said that he would like to see a federally qualified health center (FQHC), which is a clinic receiving funding from the U.S. government, take over the Greenville Hospital space.

Kirby said he was "most sensitive to lies" from various speakers during the public comment portion, who criticized him for everything from fiscal mismanagement to insensitivity, to the plight of the patient, to not reaching out to the community enough.

But he also appeared to have earned accolades from the board for detailing the financial plight of the LibertyHealth system, only for the same board to question whether or not LibertyHealth has done enough to keep it from closing.

Comments on the story can be sent to: rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.

Actually this point was addressed. JC Medical Center used to have a lockdown ward for prisoners. Some might consider this safer than the path a child has to take from home to school given the prevalence of gang activity and no one outside that area bats an eye lash at that problem.

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Greenville Hospital is useless, its one of the few hospitals that if you show up needing medical attention they will actually call another hospital (the Medical Center) to send an ambulance to pick up the person to transport to a real hospital.

I hope they do close it. Now Violent Viola wants to house convicts there. Before that it was drug abusers. And it's right across the street from a school.

Anything to preserve Glenn's last resting place.

ooopps, my bad!

Quote:

dont you know on JCList you're not allowed to reference anything that makes it sound like Healy is doing anything good...


you should edit your post to say he was drunk / naked / fighting...

then people will show up.

I posted this after the fact because I attended the rally. There were many politicians there. Richardson spoke about the issues and questioned the reasons for closing down the Hospital as well as the obvious hardships this would cause. Mayor Healy also spoke and in addition to what Richardson said, he also spoke of several ways in which to keep the hospital going, including services for veterans and also a prisoner?s lock down ward.

Others who spoke were councilpersons Brennan, Spinello, and Sottolano. Also there were L. Harvey Smith, Cunningham, a representative for Sires, a representative for Doria. I?m probably missing quite a few people, but what do you expect when I am trying to listen and wrangle three kids at the same time.

There will be a Town Hall meeting on October 8, 2007 6p.m. at the Bethune Community Center. For more information call Councilwoman Viola Richardson (201) 547-5361.

They are asking you to remember that it is some of the poorest and most vulnerable that need your help. They really need your support. Please bring a friend or two in a show of solidarity. Not only is this a necessary service, there are ways in which it could save the city money in the long run.


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Rally planned for Greenville Hospital today
by The Jersey Journal
Friday October 05, 2007, 9:35 AM

A rally will be held today in front of Greenville Hospital to press for it to remain open.

Mayor Jerramiah Healy is expected to attend the noon event, which comes on the heels of the announcement that a public hearing is set on the parent company's decision to close the hospital.

If this does close that gives yet another reason to open a narrow two lane connector road on Jersey Avenue.

State may close Greenville Hospital

Community rallies to save institution


Ricardo Kaulessar
Reporter staff writer 07/07/2007

SAVE GREENVILLE HOSPITAL – Marchers come down Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City last Saturday, June 30, protesting the pending closure of Greenville Hospital.

On the website for the LibertyHealth Systems, Greenville Hospital located at the southern end of Jersey City, is described as "a small community hospital with a big heart."

But the 100-year-old hospital's operations might end soon, as LibertyHealth Systems, the health care organization that operates it, filed with the state on June 27 to eventually close Greenville as a regular hospital.

The next day, LibertyHealth received a "certificate of need" from the state. The certificate technically allows LibertyHealth to close all regular care and offer different health services, but there are conditions they must meet first.

There actually had been talks about changing the focus of the facility for months before the June 27 filing. Since April, LibertyHealth had talked about closing the hospital's emergency room in another 12 to 18 months, and to ending all regular care in six to nine months.

But they still would like to offer in-patient behavioral and addiction services, detoxification programs, and outpatient dialysis.

State officials must now decide whether to approve such an arrangement.

In any case, the hospital staff and local officials have sought a second opinion to maintain the 100-bed hospital and its emergency room.

Outgoing State Assemblyman Louis Manzo (NJ-31st Dist.), who represents the Greenville area of the city that gives the hospital its name, asked for $10 million in the recently passed state budget to enable LibertyHealth to relocate their behavioral and addiction services from their over-crowded Jersey City Medical Center to Greenville Hospital.

Last week, Manzo could not be reached for comment on whether or not he was successful in getting that $10 million.

And there was a rally in front of the hospital on June 30, where over 200 people gathered to hear testimony from those wanting to prevent any changes to the hospital.

They included a number of city officials, including Mayor Jerramiah Healy, as well as City Council members Viola Richardson, Mary Spinello, Steven Fulop, Willie Flood, and Peter Brennan.

Dr. Muhammad Ahmad, a cardiologist at the hospital for over 25 years, said he was "very sad" to hear LibertyHealth is looking to close the hospital and bring in addiction and behavioral health services.

"It's not an ideal location for drug rehab and psych patients, because it is near a school," Ahmad said. "It should be in another location."

Financial problems
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Stephen Kirby, acting CEO and president for LibertyHealth, said recently that about 19 percent of the patients from the Greenville area use Greenville Hospital, while 33 percent of those residents use the larger Jersey City Medical Center.

"There is declining volume for Greenville [Hospital] as people are bypassing it for the Medical Center," Kirby said.

Kirby also pointed out that the Medical Center is already offering the same medical services as Greenville, and that LibertyHealth could save at least $3 million a year by eliminating "duplication of services."

LibertyHealth owns Greenville Hospital, Jersey City Medical Center, and the Meadowlands Hospital in Secaucus.

"Health care is fraught with duplication, which is not good for any hospital's financial well-being," Kirby said.

Several hospitals in Hudson County have closed facilities or had severe financial problems in the last few years, due to a lack of adequate reimbursement from insurance companies and from the state's Charity Care funds for the poor. Hospitals are required to offer emergency care to injured people whether they are insured or not.

In addition, hospitals have to compete with private medical facilities that specialize in services like ultrasound and can make a profit. Thus, hospitals have to change and specialize in order to stay solvent.

Last year, the city of Hoboken was forced to take over their St. Mary Hospital rather than having it close due to financial problems. In Jersey City, St. Francis Hospital closed in the last three years. The location is now being turned into condos.

People walk to it


Minnie Torres is one of the organizers of the June 30 rally. Torres, a resident of the Greenville section of the city, works with senior citizens as a volunteer with Jersey City-based Hudson Hospice Volunteers, Inc.

Many of Torres' clients are or have been patients of Greenville Hospital, and they live within close proximity to the hospital.

Before the rally, Torres spoke of the impact the closing of the hospital would have upon not just the seniors, but also others in the community.

"There are many people who come to this hospital who walk or take a short trip on a bus," Torres said. "What happens if they have to wait on an ambulance to go to the Medical Center or Bayonne Hospital?"

Torres continued, "God forbid there is 9/11-type emergency situation in this area and Greenville Hospital is closed." Torres plans to speak at the next City Council meeting on July 18.

Bayonne fan in a wheelchair


Among the marchers in the rally was Thomas Jasper, a resident of Second Street in Bayonne. He is confined to his motorized wheelchair due to severe back pain. Jasper said Greenville Hospital is the "only one he goes to" for the past 15 years, as opposed to Bayonne Medical Center on 29th Street in Bayonne.

"They have better service and more respect for the patients," said Jasper.

Dr. Ahmad said LibertyHealth was not addressing the problem properly, and should be looking at issues such as reimbursement from insurance companies and the amount of Charity Care expenses incurred by LibertyHealth.

Hospital on short list


But the cost-cutting is in line with what LibertyHealth has been pursuing since September after a report commissioned by the former president of LibertyHealth, Dr. Jonathan Metsch, called for cutting staff and various services at the Medical Center, as well as attracting more private care physicians and a better-paying clientele. After the report came out, Metsch resigned.

The report was requested by state health officials after Metsch asked for $3 million more in aid per month in order for that hospital to continue to operate.

Kirby pointed out Greenville Hospital has been on a "short list" of hospitals that the state has been looking to close for some time.

He also cited a recently released interim report by Gov. Jon Corzine's Commission on Rationalizing New Jersey's Health Care Resources. The commission was appointed in October to study the financial viability of hospitals across the state and whether or not they should receive state aid. The final report, which does not name any hospitals specifically, will be issued in December.

Plan to save it


At the rally, longtime Greenville Hospital staffer Dr. Medhat El-Amir said he and his fellow doctors are working on a plan to save Greenville Hospital for closing acute care, but would not reveal any details.

Mayor Healy said he would continue discussions with LibertyHealth in the future.

John McKeegan, spokesperson for LibertyHealth, said there will have to be public hearings on their future plans.

Also, they have to wait for the state to commit $10 million for capital improvements to the hospital to accommodate any new services.

Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com