Marshall: Keep Patients, Doctors In Queens
BY RICHARD GENTILVISO

Among six recommendations made, Marshall proposed that the state Department of Health establish Queens as its own health region.

When Borough President Helen Marshall needed hip surgery she went to a hospital out of her beloved Queens for the operation. "I had both of my hips replaced at [the Hospital for] Joint Diseases on 17th Street [and Second Avenue] in Manhattan," she said.

"It was not easy for people to visit me, except for the mayor," Marshall said. "If I had it to do all over again, I would prefer to have had it done in my home borough, where my friends and family could visit me more easily and at less cost and where I wouldn't feel so alienated from my home and my loved ones."

Facing an impending unknown in forthcoming recommendations from the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, also known as the Berger Commission, Marshall said, "I decided early on in the process that I didn't want to be told what was best for Queens." She hired PriceWaterhouseCoopers to document every available statistic on the current state of health care delivery in Queens. Marshall unveiled her vision of a comprehensive and sustainable health care delivery system in Queens County last week at Borough Hall.

One of the most dramatic findings is that in 2004 more than one-third of the discharges of Queens residents occurred outside the borough. Numerically, that translates into 97,000 discharges a year that leave the borough.

"On any given day, 1,400 residents of Queens County are hospitalized in beds outside of this borough," Marshall said. The hospitalizations are mainly for complex cardiac care.

Among six recommendations made, Marshall proposed that the state Department of Health establish Queens as its own health region. "This would make it possible for health care providers within the borough to expand services and successfully obtain certification for new services," she said. "For example, Queens is home to two of the nation's busiest airports, yet we do not have a burn unit." Marshall cited the nearest burn units at either New York Hospital in Manhattan or Jacobi Medical Center in The Bronx.

Marshall also called for new comprehensive hospitals to be built in The Rockaways, and in Western Queens. "We also need more ambulatory care in Western Queens," she said. "Ambulatory care centers will enable patients to seek care closer to home. Western Queens is experiencing a population boom that will eventually result in more than 10,000 housing units that did not exist a decade ago," Marshall said.

The Borough President said that specialty physicians must be imported to Queens rather than patients from Queens continuing to be exported out of the borough by establishing affiliations with specialty hospitals.

"Queens has been a stepchild to the large Manhattan-based teaching institutions for far too long," she said.

Marshall will establish a health care task force comprised of health care leaders in Queens to help implement her goals.

In contrast to her own experience, Marshall said, when her husband was in the hospital for a heart problem, he was at New York Hospital Queens. "I was able to visit him every single day," she said.