The Record
Monday, June 8, 2009
BY LINDY WASHBURN

The people who live near the former Pascack Valley Hospital say their health will be jeopardized if it doesn’t reopen. But some North Jersey hospitals say it is the region’s health care system that will be thrown into disarray if Pascack is revived.

The two camps will present their arguments today at a long-awaited hearing by the State Health Planning Board, which will make a recommendation on the defunct hospital’s fate this summer. Emotions are running high. Both sides plan to run buses to ferry people to the hearing at Westwood Regional Junior-Senior High School, which is set to accommodate 1,100 people in two auditoriums.

This “is the most important issue northern New Jersey’s health care system faces today,” the president of The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood wrote in a letter mailed to 140,000 households last week to lobby to keep the hospital closed.

But while the battle is ostensibly about meeting the health needs of local residents, it is also about power, politics and, most of all, business.

Health care is a $5 billion part of the Bergen County economy. The decision will affect taxes and real estate values, construction jobs and long-term employment, fund raising and bond ratings. It will shape the future of health care in the county because it will play a role in determining which hospitals thrive and which fail.

And it will help determine where the ambulance goes when you’re injured, where your babies are born and where your parents face their final illnesses.

Today’s hearing culminates months of public organizing and behind-the-scenes lobbying over the fate of the hospital in Westwood, which shut down 18 months ago. Millions have been spent to stage events, pack public meetings, court local officials, hire consultants, even buy hot dogs at rallies.

Hackensack University Medical Center needs state permission to reopen the hospital as a 128-bed community hospital. Called Hackensack University Medical Center North at Pascack Valley, it would be managed and mostly owned by a for-profit partner — the first for-profit hospital in the area.

Area residents want their local hospital back. “The other hospitals are so far away,” said 78-year-old Mary Leighton, who plans to speak at the hearing. “I worry about anyone who is sick or hurt and needs attention quickly.”

Hackensack’s opponents — Valley Hospital and Englewood Hospital and Medical Center — say the reopening is unnecessary and residents are getting good care without it. Reopening Pascack would siphon patients away from other hospitals, weakening all of them financially, they say. For Englewood, that could mean the difference between survival and extinction.

“If Pascack should reopen as an acute care hospital, it’s going to have a devastating impact on Englewood hospital,” said Englewood’s president, Douglas Duchak.

Read the complete article at northjersey.com