The Times reports that New York Supreme Court Justice Johnny Baynes, who earlier extended a temporary restraining order against SUNY’s shutdown of Long Island College Hospital, has ruled that the SUNY board acted in violation of New York State’s open meetings law, and vacated the board’s decision to close LICH. According to the Times:

The trustees’ use of a vague notice, a “skeletal statement of purpose in the written agenda,” and the timing of a two-hour closed executive session on Feb. 7, the day before the public vote, “seems intentionally designed to shield the purpose of the meetings from the general public and obstruct the transparency required by the Open Meetings Law,” the decision said, noting that the trustees “are not unsophisticated.”

The story also quotes a SUNY spokesman as saying that “the ruling hinges on a procedural technicality” and that “the board Would move swiftly to fix the problem.” If, as expected, the board again votes to close LICH, the plan must then be submitted to the State Department of Health, which could refuse to approve the closure, as it did a plan by LICH’s former owner, Continuum Health Partners, to close LICH’s obstetrics and pediatrics departments just over four years ago.

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/8216

In a Daily News piece, “Long Island College Hospital merged to death”, Denis Hamill retells an ambulance driver’s account, told to Hamill at Thursday evening’s community forum, about picking up a man in cardiac arrest on Hamilton Avenue, administering first aid, taking an EKG that was forwarded to LICH electronically, and getting the patient to LICH where the doctors were able to open an artery to save him, all in an elapsed time of seven minutes. Had the ambulance had to fight traffic to get to Methodist Hospital in Park Slope or Lutheran in Sunset Park, the driver said, “My opinion, add another 12-15 minutes, he wouldn’t have made it.”

In Hamill’s words: “Make no mistake: Close LICH, and people of Red Hook, Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights will die.”

Photo: denishamill.com.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/55412