It’s a lovely day at the beach in the Rockaways. Warm sun, pretty waves… and then you trip, and a jagged piece of glass embeds itself in your knee, causing you to bleed like there’s no tomorrow. Quick! To the hospital at top speed!
Well, not anymore…
Peninsula Hospital is closed. A blue tarp now covers the space atop the building where the name of the hospital once hung. It is the fourth Queens hospital to be shuttered in the last several years, and southern Queens residents are now without another 200 hospital beds and nearly 1,000 jobs.
The closure of the hospital represents obvious ramifications to the city in general but the real danger with the closure is the one it presents to residents nearest to the facility.
Take this scenario into consideration: Peninsula Hospital was the only remaining emergency room treatment center within a reasonable distance to nearby Broad Channel. With the closure, the nearest treatment for these people is 5.25 miles to St. John’s in Far Rockaway and to Jamaica Hospital which is a ten mile trek.
Five to ten miles doesn’t seem like a big deal to us at first thought— unless we are factoring in the price of gas—but even if gas were free, having to drive 5-10 miles when you’re bleeding, having a heart attack or a stroke, have been involved in a car accident or been burned in a fire, shot, stabbed, hit with a car—you get it, right? You’re screwed and more than likely the trip you’re making, be it in an ambulance or someone’s car, will not end with you alive.
According to the American Red Cross, a delay of ten minutes or longer in getting medical treatment for catastrophic illness results in death 95% of the time. And according to a study done by the Journal of Emergency Medicine, patient survival drops dramatically as the patient’s proximity to the nearest emergency medical facility increases.
Let’s face it, no one of us, except the unusually cautious or downright paranoid, expects any of these tragedies to strike them. But the fact of the matter is they happen every day to people just like those that live in the affected areas of Queens. And when you think about it, what areas of Queens have not been struck down and crippled with the loss of medical care close to their home.
Queens residents have long known as the scourge of being without sufficient medical care. As early as 2009 Queens had 1.6 beds for every 1,000 residents while Manhattan statistics revealed 6.8 beds for every 1,000 residents of that borough.
With the closures of St John’s, Mary Immaculate, Parkway and now Peninsula, those numbers have to be re-calculated—but it doesn’t require a mathematics degree to recognize just how “sick” Queens is.
In 2008, The Forum reported that St. John’s had 48,000 emergency room visits, 7,000 surgeries, 1,227 deliveries, and 50,245 clinical visits. Mary Immaculate’s emergency room served another 50,000 patients in 2007. No facility replaced either of those. And there have been two additional closings, including this one at Peninsula,since.
What Queens residents need to realize is that we must find a way to make our health care part of the political platform of any candidate, from Congressman to mayor, who intends on being elected off the votes of this borough. From where we sit, five miles might as well be the distance between here and the moon.
