Thursday, April 8, 2010

Teflon Hospital Closing: NYT Protects Pols Who Failed to Keep St. Vincent's Open

Teflon Hospital Closing
NYT Protects Pols Who Failed to Keep St. Vincent's Open

You would think the NYT would at least as Speaker Quinn why with all her power to hand out member items slush funds she could not find a few more bucks to keep a hospital which has been operating in her district for 166 years open. In fact the NYT did not say mention on pol by name in their article which strangely tried to assure readers that other hospitals would take up the patient load of the closing hospital. Why does the NYT see itself as a cheerleader than as a reporter of fact? The DN had an article saying the opposite City hospitals facing big headache in wake of St. Vincent's Hospital woes

The Media Cheerleaders
Instead of asking individual pols what when wrong they allow them to spin as a group that parts of the hospital may remain open. Here is what the NYT said today: "Local politicians also said that they would press for St. Vincent’s to remain open at least as an urgent care facility, which would assume some of the hospital’s emergency room functions. But some doctors at the hospital expressed doubt that such a facility would be a legitimate replacement for a hospital emergency room . . . Local politicians and health care workers rallied outside the hospital on Wednesday to denounce the closing, and several elected officials said they would continue to push for the creation of an urgent care center in the Village that would provide some of the services of an emergency room." Nearby Hospitals to Fill Gap When St. Vincent’s Closes (NYT)

Doctor Talks Reality
“I also don’t see how the city is going to smoothly absorb” the hospital’s estimated 60,000 emergency department patients a year, Dr. Lazar, an attending physician at St. Vincent’s, said. On warm-weather Friday and Saturday nights, he said, the emergency room “is crazy with Chelsea-West Village assault victims, drunks, overdoses, psychiatric patients.”

The Daily News also followed the NYT example
Not asking any questions to the pols why they let the hospital closed
Not mentioning any pol by name
Should the pols as mad and trying to do something

From the Daily News: "Local politicians rallied with community members outside it Wednesday to demand - at the very least - the emergency room stay open."
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