City Says NCB Will Stay Open

By JORDAN MOSS

The city has no plans to shut down North Central Bronx Hospital (NCB) in Norwood, according to Joseph Orlando, the facility's administrator.

In a brisk but polite special session of the borough services cabinet, called by Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, Orlando said, "There are no plans to close North Central Bronx Hospital." Orlando also said media reports that Montefiore Medical Center had made the city an offer to buy the facility were not true. "No offer has been made," he said.

"That's good," Ferrer responded. "That helps us clear the air an awful lot."

Ferrer's concern and that of other elected officials and hospital employees was triggered by an April Daily News column by Juan Gonzalez which reported the city intended to close the hospital, lay off its 1,200 employees and sell its physical plant to Montefiore. A later article in The New York Times quoted the head of the city's Health and Hospital Corporation (HHC), Luis Marcos, as saying, "Unless something dramatic happens in this town -- and in the Bronx in particular -- North Central Bronx will reach a point where there will not be a sufficient number of patients to justify a 450-bed hospital."

In a letter to Ferrer on April 27, Marcos said, "HHC is not taking any actions with respect to closing NCB," but cited challenges the hospital faced, like the 43 percent decline in in-patient utilization over the last decade.

Marcos agreed to attend the borough services meeting, but canceled the previous evening, Ferrer said. Orlando and another executive, LaRay Brown, attended in his place.

Orlando emphasized his efforts to convince his staff and others that the hospital would stay open, and worried that the press reports would set off a "chain reaction." "The kind of article that Juan [Gonzalez] wrote [can] become a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said.

Though he assured Ferrer NCB would remain open, Orlando said the hospital was coping with dramatic changes in the health care marketplace, including increased competition resulting from Medicaid managed care and the rapid shift away from in-patient admissions.

NCB has closed its in-patient pediatric ward including its asthma unit, though the resources were consolidated into a "bigger and more specialized pediatric unit at Jacobi," another city hospital on Pelham Parkway, Orlando said. HHC now considers Jacobi Hospital and NCB two campuses of the same hospital, according to Orlando, who is the administrator of both hospitals. Rehabilitation services have also been consolidated.

Orlando said NCB would continue to emphasize psychiatry, short-term care and obstetrics and is aggressively pursuing obstetrics referrals from other Bronx institutions. Emergency Medicine at the hospital is as strong as ever, Orlando said.

Because the administrations of Jacobi and NCB have been essentially folded into one, Ferrer worried that there was no one on site at NCB responsible for marketing the hospital's services to bring in new patients.

"It might make people more comfortable if there was somebody on site marketing," he said at one point in the meeting. In closing, he pressed Orlando: "Are we willing to implement a real marketing plan?" Orlando said he would bring Ferrer's suggestions back to top HHC officials.

If NCB were ever to close, Ferrer wondered what would happen to the Bronx's share of the one-in-four New Yorkers who have no health insurance. Before he left the meeting, Ferrer told Orlando that closing down the hospital is illegal and would be litigated. Councilwoman June Eisland, whose district includes NCB, wrote to Marcos with Council Speaker Peter Vallone and Health Committee chair Victor Robles, with a similar warning.

In a statement, Eisland said, "Let me stress that we have reminded HHC that there is a court decision and state laws which restrict them from closing the hospital arbitrarily or unilaterally."

Union officials were not satisfied by Orlando's remarks. "To me the word 'Consolidation' means getting rid of," said Doris Cross, assistant to James Butler, president of AFSCME's Local 420, the union that represents most NCB workers. She added, "If services are being taken away, whatever he's saying is just to put a shield over our eyes."

After the meeting, Orlando said he understands why employees are concerned. "It hurts those people to see 450 beds [turn into] 150 beds," he said. But, Orlando added, "That's the reality of the marketplace. It's true at every hospital."

Back to News Index Page

News | Opinion | Schools | Features | Ongoing Story | Home
About Us | Past Issues