Only a day after its staunchest defender was elected mayor of New York City, financially troubled Long Island College Hospital decreed Wednesday that it would not accept any new patients and even banned ambulances from bringing people to the emergency department.
SUNY Downstate Medical Center – which took over the troubled Cobble Hill hospital two years ago and has been trying to close it for a year- broke the news to employees Wednesday night, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported.
The stunned employees told the paper they got a telephone call from Dr.Michael Lucchesi, Chief Medical Officer at SUNY Downstate and LICH, about 6 p.m.
Mayor-elect Bill De Blasio, who boarded a jet to Puerto Rico Thursday morning for a conference and vacation, has said the hospital was too important to the community to be closed and made the issue a centerpiece of his campaign.
Dr. Toomas Sorra, a spokesman for Concerned Physicians of LICH, told the Eagle the group’s lawyers have been in touch with de Blasio’s aides about the situation.
Labor unions and community activists also joined the fight to keep LICH open, and won a victory late last month when SUNY postponed 500 planned layoffs.
A state Supreme Court judge in July also ordered Downstate to keep the hospital open, a ruling that was upheld in October by an appeals court.
The judge also appointed a monitor to make sure SUNY complied with the order.
A rep for SUNY Downstate could not immediately be reached.
Yahoo Local News – New York Post
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=16920
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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