It’s Chapter 11 … Or Divine Assistance
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If yesterday’s Chapter 11 filing in the federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York cannot solve the financial woes of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, some employees at the seven-hospital network’s flagship Greenwich Village branch said, then they will rely on divine intervention.
“I believe God is going to take care of St. Vincent and all the employees,” a radiology aide, Michelle Geerman, 35, of Brooklyn, said yesterday.
A pulmonary functions technician who has worked at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan for more than a decade, Nancy Garcia, 51, of Staten Island, had a piece of advice for the medical center’s administrators: “Bring back the nuns.” Ms. Garcia said the hospital’s patient services division has been less efficient since it cut back its reliance on religious sisters several years ago.
The effects of the umbrella network’s decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday did not appear to have reached the hospital’s hallways immediately.
“I don’t think patients are going to notice a difference,” Ms. Garcia said.
A wheelchair-bound recovering stroke victim from the Upper East Side, Gene Morin, 71, said he was unworried by news of the bankruptcy filing. “They have it under control, and the workers are still going to get their paychecks,” Mr. Morin said.
A special-ed teacher who has visited the hospital daily since May to see his wife, following her neurosurgery, expressed a similar attitude. “I guess it’s a cause of concern, but I haven’t seen any physical evidence of a change,” Leonard Charles, 50, of East New York, said.
Family members of patients at St. Vincent’s spoke enthusiastically about the care given at the network’s Manhattan hospital. “It’s better than a whole lot of hospitals in this city,” a guest services worker at the New York Palace Hotel, Ronald Bukhia, 34, of Greenpoint, said.
His father, 71, underwent a gastrectomy at St. Vincent’s three years ago and returned last week to be treated for pneumonia. “The surgeons here are much better than at Mount Sinai,” a 70-year-old retiree from Sheepshead Bay, Rose Lautato, said.
Mrs. Lautato’s husband has checked into St. Vincent’s three times a week for three years to undergo kidney-dialysis treatment.
“We get the best of care every time,” Mrs. Lautato said.
