FOR 53 YEARS residents in the northeastern part of New Jersey were able to receive medical treatments at Pascack Valley Hospital. Last November, that hospital closed its doors, forcing tens of thousands of people to seek alternatives to meet their health care needs.

What exactly happens when a hospital closes? Do patients simply go elsewhere? After all, Bergen County is a densely populated area of the state and home to four other hospitals. Surely they could handle the patient load from a hospital that in its last years of operation suffered from a bad reputation and reduced patient admissions.

What we have since found in Westwood is that the closure of Pascack Valley Hospital had a profound effect not only on our own municipality, but on the broader community consisting of our neighboring towns throughout our region.

What had once been a thriving corridor for commerce, office and light manufacturing slowly began to transform into not much more than a pass-through zone dotted now with "office space for lease" signs and empty parking lots.

Impact on community

Consider the impact. Seven hundred jobs from the hospital eliminated from the local economy. Seven hundred people who shopped in the area, filled up their gas tanks and had their cars serviced at local repair shops were no longer consumers.

Now take away the thousands of patients, visitors and doctors. All of a sudden, the once thriving diners and restaurants that offered comforting meals were struggling with empty tables. Employee spending, institutional spending and patient, family and visitor spending were all removed from the local economy, putting a severe financial strain on small-business owners in an already difficult economic climate.

The full effect of the closing has not yet been felt by the Pascack Valley business community. Hundreds of former employees reside in Westwood and in surrounding municipalities. All still have rent or mortgage payments, car payments, food costs and children to support. Although some of the hospital staff have found employment elsewhere, many others have not been so fortunate and bills are piling up for these families.

When Pascack Valley Hospital closed its doors for good there was much speculation on what would happen to the property. Would a new hospital ever open, or would perhaps a "medical mall" take its place?

Developers were eager for an opportunity to buy the property for non-medical commercial use. After all, 20 acres of prime Bergen County real estate was now up for grabs. Speculators, including a partnership comprised of both Valley and Englewood Hospitals, were lining up with plans for townhouse developments, strip malls and office complexes. None of those was attractive to Westwood, where a thriving central business district would suffer further with the proposed new retail centers taking customers out of the downtown area.

New residential development would only serve to burden a school system already bursting at the seams.

And just exactly who would be occupying office space when the single largest economic engine in the region was gone?

Medical needs

What about the medical needs of our residents? We are seeing patients who had previously been able to obtain medical treatment and therapy locally, particularly those provided as outpatient services at Pascack Valley Hospital, now traveling elsewhere.

The impact has been significantly felt by the elderly.

Many patients are choosing to cancel appointments for treatment rather than drive through heavy Bergen County traffic in poor weather to more distant health care facilities. This is the burden placed upon these residents, who for so long counted on accessible health care in a familiar local environment.

This is the real impact.

Volunteer ambulance corps across the region have seen a dramatic increase in run times since the hospital closed. Instead of traveling only a few minutes to reach Pascack Valley Hospital, the typical round trip can take hours because of the greater distances to other hospitals, delays in emergency rooms for patient admissions and the frequency of time that emergency rooms divert patients because of overcrowding.

One hospital saw the number of hours on ER divert more than quadruple those from 2007, and that is only for the first six months of 2008.

When it comes to hospital admissions, delays for patients from the emergency department and admitted into a room have also increased as a direct result of the increased patient load. There are reports of patients lying on gurneys in hallways waiting for medical attention.

Patient care across Bergen County has suffered because of the closing of Pascack Valley Hospital.

The health care crisis in the United States is real. When Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood closed, the impact on the region was devastating. Having access to quality medical care cannot be overemphasized.

Our citizens deserve quality health care — not just in our remote corner of New Jersey, but throughout the state, throughout the country and throughout the world.

John Birkner is mayor of Westwood.