New York City's Health Care System In Free Fall : 16 Failing Hospital Closures Since 2003!

Here is a section of a larger article about the sad state of New York City's health care system. (To read the entire article, follow the link below!)

Hospital Closures and Medicaid Shifts Took Toll on NYC’s Health

Author - Ruth Ford January 4, 2017

Five years ago, a group of survey takers set out on a deceptively simple task—to ask people what brought them to the emergency room. For two weeks in the summer of 2011 and again in the winter, the surveyors, including medical students, hospital staff and hospital volunteers, visited six hospital emergency rooms in northern and central Brooklyn and asked the simplest of questions: Why are you here?

Of all the answers that surprised the survey gatherers for the Brooklyn Health Improvement Project, the most surprising one was also the simplest: It was easier and more convenient to sit in an ER waiting room than to try and find a doctor who would see them and help them the same day. It was easier to sit and wait in one place than to be bounced around by phone, put on hold or put off entirely. The added benefit of the ER waiting room: It was near the hospital specialists, labs, pharmacies and outpatient clinics. Rather than travel all over to see an internist, get blood work done, get into the radiologist for a CAT scan, any follow-up you needed could be done the same day or soon after, in the same place. Like getting food for the week, back-to-school clothes and a new bike at Target—getting all your health care needs met at the hospital just made sense.

Until, that is, the city started closing them. Since 2003, 16 hospitals have closed around New York City, four in Brooklyn alone, putting more and more pressure on the remaining hospitals to see more patients under more crowded and facility-challenged conditions. For families living in poor neighborhoods, more hospital closings have put greater pressure on the surviving facilities, and they have also stretched the distances people have to travel to receive care. (Read the entire article)

https://citylimits.org/2017/01/04/hospital-closures-and-medicaid-shifts-took-toll-on-nycs-health/