Long Island College Hospital To Become Part Of NS-LIJ

U.S.A. New York

Published

How long has one been saying the ongoing drama over closure of Long Island Hospital was déjà vu all over again as it closely mirrored the saga of Saint Vincent's? Well now that seems to have come true.

SUNY which legally could have closed the hospital today was in court along with Peebles Inc. and NS-LIJ today to seek and won approval to keep the hospital's emergency room open on a walk in basis. "Walk-in emergency patients will be screened, stabilized and then transferred to other facilities." Ambulances are directed to take emergency patients to other local facilities and there will be no admissions or inpatient care.

The bidder Peebles submitted a plan that would develop a good part of LICH's campus into housing (luxury) and maintain what was left of LICH as urgent and or ambulatory care, but not a full service hospital IIRC. Peebles has said it will use the coming months to study "community healthcare needs" but one will be greatly surprised if a full service general hospital opens on LICH's campus.

So long story short after all the court battles and a bitter battle by the community , 1199, NYSNA, Bill de Blasio and others the outcome seems to be going exactly the same as Saint Vinny's; LICH will cease to exist as a full service general hospital and much of it's campus will be developed into real estate. NS-LIJ will operate an urgent care facility on part of the former campus just as they are doing with the O'Toole Building in The Village.

Won't post links since that would make this a "news" item and one doesn't think interest in this story goes beyond NYC. Much of this has been local news last night and earlier today.

This is the route that medicine is trying to take which is community based care. Opening clinics, ambulatory surgery. NSLIJ has started that in many of the hosptials they aquired especially Glen Cove. The theory behind it or should I say research is that if you treat them in the community they are less likey to return to the hospital for same dx. If a patient return within 30days of a discharge for same dx then hospital does not get reimbursed. So in order to have the business side of things on the up they realize opening hospital based clinics will prevent many unnecessary readmissions.

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