“We wore out a path to Albany,” Michelle Rider told the community leaders at yesterday’s meeting in the Medical Arts Building. The chairwoman of the Board of Trustees said St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital (SLCH) was turned down five times in its request for funding. “We were not financially sick enough,” Ms. Rider said. “There were some hospitals on respirators.”
But SLCH needed assistance. It was losing money on 70 percent of the patients it treated. In another year it could be on a financial respirator itself.
In June, the trip to Albany was finally rewarding. The state agreed to provide funding based on the hospital’s five-year plan, which included a reduction in the number of patients coming to SLCH for emergency care, and the closing of the Emergency Department (ED) in Cornwall.
Interim President and CEO Joan Cusack McGuirk said the number of patients coming to the ED in Cornwall has declined for seven straight years, as more people are using urgent care and extended primary care centers in the area. That’s in keeping with the hospital’s plan.
Mrs. Cusack McGuirk confirmed that when the Cornwall ED closes on Oct. 1, the hospital will increase its capacity for emergency treatment in Newburgh. But County Legislator Kevin Hines was skeptical. “The halls of the Newburgh ED are overflowing with patients,” he said. “How will you handle the more than 250 people a week who’ll be coming from Cornwall?”
While hospital official Dan Maughan said an overflow of patients is an infrequent occurrence, it did happen on Thursday, July 21. A resident who brought his son to the Newburgh ED observed six gurneys with patients in the hall.
