Greenville Hospital has two deadlines: Six months if Jersey City can come up with $1.5 million to keep it open, or 90 days if the city can’t.
That was the outcome of a hearing at the Hyatt Regency in Princeton Thursday, when the NJ State Health Planning Board convened to make a determination on the closing of the 100-bed hospital located in the southern part of Jersey City.
LibertyHealth Systems, the organization that operates Greenville Hospital, has looked to close it since April, citing a $3 million deficit. LibertyHealth also claims a duplication of medical services offered by the Jersey City Medical Center, the other Jersey City hospital it operates.
The company filed a certificate of need application with the NJ Department of Health and Human Services to close the hospital. If the board decided that the hospital should be closed, members would have recommended their decision to the state’s Health Commissioner Fred Jacobs.
Instead, the board took Mayor Jerramiah Healy up on his offer made during the meeting to commit $1.5 million to keep the hospital open for another six months. But the board added a condition: if the city did not produce the money within 90 days, they will convene another meeting to decide whether or not to recommend closing Greenville Hospital.
The board made the decision after four hours of hearing public comments which unanimously opposed closure, as well as presentations from those who advocated for closing.
The result was that the 200 people who showed up to save Greenville Hospital got something of a minor miracle. And it didn’t go unappreciated, as members of the public offered rousing applause and handshakes to the board members.
After the meeting, Healy was happy, but remained realistic about the board’s decision.
“Today, the decision bought extra time,” Healy said. “Now we must work with the city’s business administrator and the City Council to locate additional funds to try to keep Greenville Hospital open.”Just some more time and accuracy
For those who wanted the hospital to stay open, one key word was time.
Mayor Healy and other officials at the meeting pleaded with the health board to offer a little more time before they made a decision, to allow Jersey City government to work with elected officials on county, state and federal levels to find fiscal and operational solutions to keep the hospital alive.
For officials, and especially for patients, it was the time that would be tacked on if they had to travel the extra three miles to the Jersey City Medical Center. It could make the difference between life and death, some said as they cited the problems with daily traffic and the decreases in public transportation.
That was the sentiment expressed by local resident Linda Jackson, who credited Greenville Hospital for saving her life when she suffered from a staph infection. She claimed she could have had tougher time she had to travel to the Medical Center.
“My health does not depend on a clock,” Jackson said. The other word bandied about during the meeting was inaccurate.
As in state Senator-elect Sandra Bolden Cunningham made a plea for the board to delay their decision, she said testimony from a number of speakers at the meeting would shed light on “a lot of inaccurate and misleading information” in the certificate of need filed by LibertyHealth.
Lorenzo Richardson, aide to City Councilwoman Viola Richardson (also a relative), pointed out that by closing the Greenville Hospital, LibertyHealth has projected spending $6 million total for retirement benefits and the commercial mortgage of the hospital building if they close – twice the amount of the hospital’s deficit. It doesn’t “add up,” he said. He also added that other information provided by LibertyHealth to close Greenville Hospital, ranging from the claims of duplication of services and the convenience of public transportation for patients to travel to other hospitals, should be scrutinized further. Still making his case
After the hearing ended, LibertyHealth CEO Stephen Kirby tried to mask his frustration when he was told that plans to close the hospital would have to wait. He decided to play the role of the good sport.
“I’ll work with Mayor Healy starting tomorrow, and will continue to work with him if he can put up the $1.5 million,” Kirby said. “But even if the hospital survives, it won’t be an acute care facility because there would be too many beds.”
Kirby also said that he would like to see a federally qualified health center (FQHC), which is a clinic receiving funding from the U.S. government, take over the Greenville Hospital space.
Kirby said he was “most sensitive to lies” from various speakers during the public comment portion, who criticized him for everything from fiscal mismanagement to insensitivity, to the plight of the patient, to not reaching out to the community enough.
But he also appeared to have earned accolades from the board for detailing the financial plight of the LibertyHealth system, only for the same board to question whether or not LibertyHealth has done enough to keep it from closing. Comments on the story can be sent to: rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.