The Record — Letter to the Editor
Sunday, November 9, 2008
BY LINDA L. HUNTER, Morristown

I am dismayed that the state Department of Health would even consider Hackensack University Medical Center’s filing for a certificate of need to open a 128-bed acute care hospital at the site of the former Pascack Valley Hospital.

The 2008 Reinhardt Report of Governor Corzine’s New Jersey Commission on Rationalizing Health Care Resources validates that New Jersey has an oversupply of hospitals. This is true throughout most of the state, particularly problematic in the Pascack Valley service area.

Excess capacity of hospital beds financially weakens existing hospitals. All New Jersey hospitals are struggling to survive on the ever-decreasing payments for their services by managed care and other health insurers. At the same time, the hospitals are also trying to provide state-of-the-art technology and services, care for the uninsured and the underinsured, and maintain a full array of health care services.

In the case of the Pascack communities, after the closure of Pascack Valley, the remaining five full-service hospitals within a 12-mile radius demonstrated their ability to meet the needs of the local residents. Even with the increased volume of admissions from patients who may have accessed Pascack Valley, the remaining hospitals are still are not operating at full bed-occupancy capacity. Why then would more hospital beds be needed?

Additional troubling aspects of HUMC’s proposal are that the venture is being undertaken in partnership with an out-of-state company from Texas, Legacy Hospital Partners, and that the proposed facility would be a for-profit hospital. For-profit hospitals, as with for-profit companies outside the health care arena, see making money for the shareholders as their primary obligation. Have we learned nothing from this current economic crisis, where corporate greed supplanted the economic health of the citizenry?

It is easy to understand what I am sure is some degree of local loyalty to a hospital that served its community over the years, and the wishful thought that the new entity may be a mini-HUMC. If this new entity is approved, it will be neither of these things. The Health Department should deny the certificate of need.

The writer, a registered nurse, is director of the graduate program in health care management at the College of Saint Elizabeth.