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Keeping Hospitals and essential Services open for Care
over the summer, NYSNA also fought to keep hospitals open for care and protect essential services. We shifted our campaign against Montefiore’s proposed closure of Mount Vernon Hospital in the heart of Black Westchester into high gear, and have once again succeeded in keeping the hospital open for care. In June, Montefiore New Rochelle closed its Maternal and Child Health units in order to redeploy nurses to care for CoVID patients. this left families without essential care, and NYSNA nurses and elected officials fought back and won a reopening of these services for the community When hospital systems used CoVID as an excuse to shutter essential—but less profitable—inpatient mental health services, NYSNA members were there to speak out for our patients and communities. In June, we rallied at New York-presbyterian in Brooklyn and at NYp’s Allen pavillion in Manhattan.
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At Northwell Syosset Hospital, nurses, counselors and mental health advocates also spoke out after a behavioral health patient languished in the eR for four days following the hospital’s decision to close its inpatient mental health services.
When HealthAlliance Hudson Valley RNs mobilized to stop the closure of the county’s only inpatient psychiatric beds, their struggle was featured in a front page story in the Wall Street Journal. In December, NYSNA members across the Hudson Valley joined with community and elected leaders at a holiday car caravan to raise awareness.
As Irving Campbell, a psychiatric RN at New York presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist, said, “Mental healthcare is under attack in New York at a time when patients need it most.”
NYSNA members fought the wave of closures to inpatient psychiatric beds and services.
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