Denis Hamill on LICH: SUNY “is going to kill people.”

In a Daily News piece, “Long Island College Hospital merged to death”, Denis Hamill retells an ambulance driver’s account, told to Hamill at Thursday evening’s community forum, about picking up a man in cardiac arrest on Hamilton Avenue, administering first aid, taking an EKG that was forwarded to LICH electronically, and getting the patient to LICH where the doctors were able to open an artery to save him, all in an elapsed time of seven minutes. Had the ambulance had to fight traffic to get to Methodist Hospital in Park Slope or Lutheran in Sunset Park, the driver said, “My opinion, add another 12-15 minutes, he wouldn’t have made it.”

In Hamill’s words: “Make no mistake: Close LICH, and people of Red Hook, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights will die.”

Photo: denishamill.com.

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  • TeddyNYC

    I also think some people will die because of the extra minutes it will take to get them to an ER.

  • http://twitter.com/bg14830 William J. Goodman

    The decision makers may view this as collateral damage in the real estate wars that needs media spin control. The closing of hospitals in poorer neighborhoods and the consolidation of health care to richer zip codes
    is the business model. Thanks to this blog for
    helping shape an effective response to that model. Can we really not afford LICH?

  • DIBS

    Your second sentence makes no sense as a logical extension of your first one.

  • http://twitter.com/bg14830 William J. Goodman

    Correct.

  • Knight

    Is Cobble Hill to be considered the “poorer neighborhood” here … its health care being consolidated to Manhattan, where the supposedly more elite folks live?