Assessing Northwell’s stand-alone E.D.
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
It’s been fi ve years since Northwell’s stand-alone
emergency department opened in the wake of the
closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital in April 2010.
Now known as Lenox Health Greenwich Village,
the E.D. is on Seventh Ave. between W. 12 and W.
13th Sts.
The Social Services Committee of Community
Board 2 will hold a meeting on Mon., April 29, to
discuss “how the community is engaging with” the
free-standing E.D. — meaning without on-site hospital
beds — the fi rst of its kind in Manhattan and only
the second in New York City.
The meeting, led by the committee’s chairperson,
Susanna Aaron, will be at Little Red School House,
272 Sixth Ave., at Bleecker St. in the auditorium,
starting at 6:30 p.m.
Participants will include representatives from Lenox
Health Greenwich Village, the Fire Department
— which runs the city’s E.M.S. ambulance service
— and Say-Ah.org, a nonprofi t specializing in teaching
healthcare literacy.
“The hospital system seems to be undergoing so
many changes,” Aaron said. “Maybe the stand-alone
E.R. is a good, effi cient model that meets our needs.
Maybe people have had fantastic service. Or maybe
people are unhappy with it. Maybe there are some
kinks to be worked out for it to serve patients better.
Maybe people have questions about costs, or when
to choose the E.R. versus a primary-care doctor ver-
Pols demand vax
exemptions ban
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELL-DOMENECH
State politicians recently gathered on the steps of
City Hall to drum up support for a new bill that
bans religious exemptions from vaccinations for
any child who attends school in New York State.
“Just a few decades ago, we assumed measles was
defeated, but now it’s roaring back,” said state Senator
Brad Hoylman.
The push for the bill comes after Rockland County
Executive Ed Day last month declared a state of emergency
in his Upstate county following an outbreak of
measles on Staten Island. As of April 16, Rockland
County had 186 confi rmed measles cases. According
to the New York City government Department of
Health page, as of April 3, there had been 259 confi
rmed cases of measles in Brooklyn and Queens. The
outbreak is linked to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.
The bill, fi rst introduced in 2014, is currently being
sponsored by Hoylman in the Senate and Assemblymember
Jeffrey Dinowitz. The legislation would
repeal all nonmedical exemptions from vaccination
requirements for children.
“I represent Rockland County and the numbers
there do not lie,” said state Senator David Carlucci
at the April 4 City Hall steps press conference. “We
have an emergency, with one of the largest measles
outbreaks in the state.”
Measles has been labeled as one of the 10 largest
threats to global health in 2019 by the World Health
Organization. Prior to the development of a measles
vaccine in 1963, there were 2.6 million deaths from
the disease worldwide annually, according to WHO.
PHOTO BY LEE WEISSMAN
Lenox Health Greenwich Village, on Seventh Ave. between
12th and 13th Sts., offers a 24/7 emergency department,
imaging services and more.
sus urgent care, or what gets set in motion
when one calls 911.
“We hope to get a strong turnout, so that
we can get useful feedback on how community
members are engaging with their
healthcare options and with this model of
emergency care.”
While the community hoped to retain a
full-service hospital, obviously, that didn’t
happen.
“We are not going to bemoan the closing
of St. Vincent’s,” Aaron said of the meeting’s
agenda. “We’ve already covered that
ground and the community expressed our
desires and concerns clearly.”
Schneps Media TVG April 18, 2019 23
/Say-Ah.org