Ahearn: Too much care can be bad
The Record
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
BY JAMES AHEARN, Record Columnist
The situation at Pascack Valley is harder to understand.
NEW JERSEY has too many hospitals. They compete wastefully. Two years ago, Governor Corzine appointed a commission to study the problem. He chose as chairman a nationally recognized expert on health economics, a Princeton professor, Uwe Reinhardt.
In January the panel submitted its report. It said that rather than trying to keep every struggling hospital going, the state should support those that are essential. An essential hospital was defined as one that serves poor patients, provides key services like trauma care, and treats a significant portion of the local population.
Institutions that fail to meet these standards should get help to close down in orderly fashion. The report confirmed that there was a substantial statewide surplus of hospital beds, and concluded that nowhere was the surplus bigger than in Bergen and Passaic counties.
The imbalance was so large in the Hackensack-Ridgewood-Paterson market area that it was equivalent to two or three of the mid-sized hospitals that serve the area. The panel said it was not proposing that two or three of them close, but that if one or two did, the remaining hospitals could take up the slack with no reduction in patient care.
As if in anticipation of the report, two heavily indebted hospitals, Barnert in Paterson and Pascack Valley in Westwood, had previously declared bankruptcy and were closing.
Barnert served an inner-city population. Many of its patients lacked medical insurance. All were transferred without incident to the larger St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center across town, and life went on.
The situation at Pascack Valley was harder to understand. The communities it served were solidly middle-class. Most residents were insured. The hospital had recently opened a glossy, $50-million, four-story wing with marble baths and garden views for maternity patients. The administration hoped the addition would attract patients who could choose where to receive care.
Didn’t happen. The new wing turned out to be a money pit. From 1996 to 2006, when admissions at every other hospital in Bergen were rising, those at Pascack Valley declined by nearly a third.
