1199SEIU members are expressing both concern and outrage at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital (SLCH) in New York State’s mid-Hudson Valley and they are doing everything possible to protest the administration’s plan to reduce by half the hours of operation of the Emergency Room on the hospital’s Cornwall campus. The hospital also has a campus nine miles away in Newburgh. That nine-mile span is rural, and often a treacherous stretch during upstate New York’s temperamental winters.

Jennifer Marray, a radiological technologist at the Newburgh campus, is part of a group of 1199SEIU members and area residents who have been making their voices heard by attending and speaking at community forums and meetings of the NYS Public Health and Health Planning Council (PHHPC), as well as lobbying state and federal elected officials.

“I don’t think everyone, including some legislators, understood the potentially disastrous consequences of this move before we started to speak out. Our group includes EMS workers, community members of all ages, and our Assemblyman James Skoufis (D-99) has been wonderful in leading the way,” Marray said.

“The fact is that most emergencies can’t simply wait until the morning,” she said. “That’s why they are called emergencies and that’s why public health law takes emergency care so seriously. The hospital’s proposal to keep open the Cornwall ER only from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. is dangerous and irresponsible. We told the Health Planning Council, the body that has the power to accept or deny the hospital’s proposal, that any policy that allows the hospital to make this change would be unjustified.”

Closing the ER overnight means that patients in need of emergency care, whether traveling in an ambulance or in a personal vehicle, will be diverted to another hospital. For the rural Cornwall area, travel time to any other hospital would be increased, possibly delaying life-saving treatment for patients with symptoms of stroke, cardiac arrest, asthma or a number of other serious health problems. The trip to the hospital is even more risky on less traveled roads and in inclement weather. Timely treatment can make the difference between life and death, or months of rehabilitative services.

Marray notes that closing the ER on the Cornwall campus will place an additional burden on an already crowded ER on the SLCH Newburgh campus.

In a memo to the Health Planning Council, 1199SEIU members wrote, “Keep in mind that the ER at Cornwall is vital to both the voluntary EMS and Orange County Emergency Management systems. The healthcare professionals who provide these services have testified to this point many times in the past few months. The Cornwall ER is located close to Stewart Airport and the intersection of I 87 and I 84, making it the facility that would provide emergency services in the event of a catastrophic event. While it is not pleasant to think of those circumstances, we all know too well that they happen and it is the responsibility of public health officials to ensure that the appropriate services are available 24 hours every day.”

Further community forums and lobby visits are planned after the new year.