NEWS
Vote on Pascack Valley Hospital expected in July
Monday, June 8, 2009
More than 60 people, many telling personal stories of lives saved at Pascack Valley Hospital before it closed, testified at a packed and raucous public hearing Monday about a plan to reopen the hospital.
Chairman Judy Donlen of the State Health Planning Board paused several times to scold the audience of 700 at the hearing on Hackensack University Medical Center’s application to reopen the hospital in Westwood as a 128-bed community hospital.
“This is a public hearing,” Donlen said, when the largely pro-Hackensack audience booed and heckled the few who spoke against its proposal. “Every position is valid.”
Nearly 300 other residents were seated in an adjacent auditorium at Westwood Regional Jr./Sr. High School, watching the proceedings on closed-circuit television.
Parents told of disasters averted because they were able to get to an emergency room on time when the hospital was open, and senior citizens told of long waits for emergency care at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood since Pascack shut down in 2007.
Lisa Babin of Emerson told of “the scariest day of her life” in 2005 when, 39 weeks pregnant, she was taken to Pascack by ambulance after suffering an aneurysm in her spleen. Her baby, Michael, was delivered by Caesarean section and she underwent six hours of surgery to remove her spleen.
“If I had spent another 15 minutes in the ambulance,” I would not be alive today, she said. “Michael and I were able to beat the incredible odds stacked against us, and I believe my neighbors deserve that same chance.”
The audience cheered.
Annette Pennington, a resident of Westwood House, a subsidized senior housing development in Westwood, said none of the 200 people living there wants to take a chance on making it to Valley Hospital in Ridgewood in an emergency. “Especially since we know if we do make it, we will be lying in their overcrowded hallways waiting for a bed,” she added.
One resident of the Pascack Valley area, Peter Jarosz of River Vale, spoke against Hackensack’s proposal. Even when the Westwood hospital was open, he said, he bypassed it if his two children needed emergency care. Now, he said, he understands that reopening it would weaken the remaining hospitals in the county.
His remarks were drowned out by catcalls from the audience, prompting Donlen to pound her gavel.
The four-hour hearing had been anticipated for months. Cars began pulling into the parking lot of the high school as the students were leaving at 3 p.m. When the doors opened at 4 p.m., the line stretched the length of the school.
Those supporting the reopening wore big green “People First” buttons, and those opposing it wore red “Keep Our Hospitals Healthy” buttons.
A dozen mayors spoke in favor of the Hackensack proposal, including Westwood's John Birkner Jr., who presented a petition with what he said were 23,609 signatures. The hospital is as necessary now as it was 50 years ago when it was first opened, he said.
“I resent people from outside my area coming here and telling my residents that they cannot have access to care and have to go wait on a gurney in a hallway,” he said.
Valley and Englewood Hospital and Medical Center both oppose the proposal to reopen the Westwood hospital as Hackensack University Medical Center North at Pascack Valley.
Englewood would suffer serious financial damage if the hospital reopens, causing it to reduce services and lay off workers, testified its vice president, Michael Pietrowicz. “It will challenge our ability to survive in these turbulent times,” he said.
Valley’s chief financial officer, Richard Keenan, asked: “If a hospital was so needed [in Westwood], why wasn’t it utilized sufficiently to survive?”
Noting Englewood’s poor financial situation, Keenan said the reopening of Pascack Valley would “in effect, just be trading a hospital in Westwood for a hospital in Englewood.”
Executives from both Valley and Englewood were stretched thin on Monday. Valley’s delegation left to attend a hearing before the Ridgewood Planning Board on a proposed new hospital zoning ordinance to accommodate its renovation plans. Englewood’s officials were dealing with an ongoing lockout of unionized nurses. Each hospital bussed employees and others to the hearing.
Supporting the position of Valley and Englewood were three lawmakers: state Sens. Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck, and Robert Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, and Assemblyman Gordon Johnson, D-Englewood.
“Why are we holding a hearing such as this about reopening a failed suburban hospital, while ignoring the desperate pleas of urban areas for quality health care?” said Johnson.
On the other side were state Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Demarest; Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk, R-Westwood; and Assemblyman John Rooney, R-Northvale.
State Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Wood-Ridge, also spoke in favor of the Hackensack proposal. He described a personal health emergency last October, when he became unconscious at home and wouldn’t have survived without an emergency room within a 10-minute drive, he said. In addition, the proposal will stimulate the economy with “hundreds of jobs,” he said.
Several Westwood area doctors told of the difficulties they encounter in caring for their patients because of the added distance to check on them at the other hospitals.
Dr. Lois Copeland of Hillsdale told of a 59-year-old man whose life was saved because he received an emergency cardiac catheterization at Pascack Valley when it was open. The current satellite emergency department opened by Hackensack last October cannot offer that service without a full hospital at the site.
“Please allow others to obtain the same health benefits that this gentleman did,” she said.
Also notable were some who did not testify. Donlen’s list of those who had signed up included Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney, Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes and Ann Twomey, president of the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union, none of whom was present. Donlen also asked if a representative from Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck would like to speak, and none responded.
The meeting included brief remarks from Hackensack’s acting president, Robert Garrett. He was joined in the front row of the auditorium by many of Hackensack’s board of governors, including its chairman, J. Fletcher Creamer, Jr., and Joseph Sanzari. Also attending were Dr. Peter Gross, the hospital's chief medical officer, and Robert Glenning, its chief financial officer.
The board will receive written testimony through June 15 and expects to make a recommendation on whether to approve the Hackensack proposal at its July meeting, tentatively scheduled for July 16.
E-mail: washburn@northjersey.com
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