OPINION: Patients for LICH call on de Blasio to support return of hospital to northwest Brooklyn
On Monday, the advocacy group Patients for LICH released the following statement regarding Long Island College Hospital following SUNY’s announcement that an agreement had been reached to sell the hospital to Fortis Property Group for development into condos:
We represent patients of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) and their families and friends. We have stood at dozens of rallies and protests over the past sixteen months and have joined others in collecting over 56,000 signatures of individuals committed to saving our hospital. Our community organizations have litigated alongside hospital unions and the New York City Public Advocate, and our elected officials have stood with us over many months of struggle to keep our full-service hospital.
Judge Baynes’ June 13 decision rejecting our communities’ challenge to the LICH RFP scoring was disappointing and also puzzling. The decision cited absence of evidence, but community groups had in fact offered in evidence a key SUNY admission, and the court had refused to hear the testimony of a member of the RFP technical evaluation committee. Judge Baynes also expressed his reluctance to interfere in a settlement over which he had explicitly retained jurisdiction — a settlement whose essential ingredient, the preservation of a full-service hospital at LICH, was subverted by SUNY’s administration of the RFP process. This decision strengthens our resolve to fight for the survival of LICH, the hospital that has served the healthcare needs of our communities for 156 years.
We call on Mayor de Blasio and the Health and Hospitals Corporation to support our efforts to ensure the return of a full-service hospital to LICH and to help facilitate the New York State licensing process for such a hospital.