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Closing of PVH endangers tri-borough towns
(by Karen F. Mrnarevic - October 24, 2007)
High quality, efficient emergency services are vital to the welfare of borough residents. With the closing of
Pascack
Valley
Hospital looming on the horizon, municipal officials have begun to raise the alarm that emergency paramedic and transport services stand to suffer, to the detriment of the community.
Woodcliff Lake Councilman Jeffrey Bader and Police Chief Tony Jannicelli are making an effort to address the issue of how the closing of
Pascack
Valley would effect the level of paramedic services available to
Woodcliff
Lake and the other Tri-borough towns, Montvale and
Park Ridge .
At present, when an emergency call requiring an ambulance comes into the Woodcliff Lake Police department, an ambulance is sent to the scene from the Tri-Boro Ambulance covering detail. If the call fits a certain criteria, a Mobile Intensive Care Unit (MICU) paramedic is also dispatched.
While Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) are capable of performing skills such as first aid, application of emergency oxygen, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and early defibrillation with Semiautomatic Defibrillators (SAED), there are specific capacities in which MICU paramedics and supplies are necessary. The MICU is a non-transport emergency unit that carries two specially trained paramedics, who are capable of administering life-sustaining drugs, applying electrical defibrillation, establishing intravenous therapy and utilizing advanced airway skills at the scene of an emergency.
Under the terms of PVH’s bankruptcy filing, the hospital’s MICU license (also know as a Certificate of Need) will be sold separately from the hospital itself. Numerous nearby hospitals have begun discussing options for assuming PVH’s MICU services (See related article, page 1).
With the closing of PVH, calls from the Tri-borough communities requiring the MICU would automatically be diverted to
Valley
Hospital , which would mean an increased call volume and greater distances to cover.
One solution proposed by Bader and Jannicelli, in order to lessen the distance a MICU would have to travel to reach a victim in the Tri-borough communities would be to establish a satellite station from which to dispatch the MICU ambulances. Bader has drafted a letter to be submitted to
Valley
Hospital on behalf of the Tri-borough towns requesting that Valley open a temporary satellite MICU dispatch facility, tentatively located at the
Tice
Center .
Bader has also been in touch with a member of the Valley Hospital Board of Trustees, who has requested an outline of the issues faced by
Woodcliff
Lake and surrounding towns. According to Bader, Peter Diestel, senior vice president of
Valley
Hospital , agrees that the concerns brought forth by Bader and Jannicelli have merit, and he would like to investigate the issue further in hopes of working out a temporary solution.
Josephine Higgins, who works as the director of the
Tice
Senior
Center , has suggested that the temporary satellite MICU dispatch be located at the Tri-boro Ambulance headquarters instead of at the
Tice
Center . According to her, Tri-boro Ambulance is more centrally located to the Tri-borough towns. “Proposing that the
Tice
Center be the site of a satellite MICU dispatch is all well and good on its face,” she says, “but the center is not a very good place from which to dispatch ambulances.”
Higgins says that the center is usually pretty busy, with seniors and children present, making for a potentially dangerous situation if speeding emergency vehicles were added to the mix. So far nobody from
Valley
Hospital or the borough has formally contacted Tri-boro Ambulance to work out an arrangement.
While Bader agrees that the best location for the temporary dispatch center would be the Tri-boro Ambulance headquarters, he says that he proposed the Tice Center, which is run by the borough, as a location, “to get the ball rolling” on the project. This week, Bader says, he will meet with Mayor Joseph LaPaglia, Borough Administrator Ed Sandve, and representatives of
Valley
Hospital in order to come up with a comprehensive strategy for how to proceed.
“Our short-term goal is to make sure there is no lapse in service come November when PVH closes,” Bader says. He says another issue that will be discussed at the meeting with
Valley
Hospital is the more long-term objective of dividing the Tri-borough into geographical areas in order to figure out how each location would be best served by emergency services.
At time of publication, officials from
Valley
Hospital could not be reached for comment.
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