About
the Hospital Now Working Group
We are a
working group of private citizens, dedicated to
the re-establishment of a medical center for the
Lower West Side of Manhattan. We are disappointed
in the unresponsiveness of our elected officials to the
public health crisis which has followed the closing of St.
Vincent's Hospital.
We perceive
that there has also been a vacuum in the community's response
to the crisis caused by the large scale of the problem and
the lack of leadership by our elected officials and public
health officials. Passivity and resignation are widespread
where there should be proactive planning for a new medical
center. We want to help energize our community with initiatives
intended to re-establish what we have lost.
Our first
action was to provide a way for people to report their hardships
caused by the closing of St. Vincent's. We have set up an
automated system for people to share experiences.
If
you have experienced a hardship due to the closing of St.
Vincent's Hospital, please send
an email (preferred) describing it, or leave
a voice recording at (646) 389-1279.
For more information and our privacy policy,
please go to our write-in
page.
The Lower West
Side encompasses the financial district, Manhattan's three
tunnels, and a growing population of new families with children
and senior citizens. An area of this scale (even if it didn't
contain the country's foremost terrorist targets) cannot
be without a trauma center. The large patient population
may itself lure established hospitals to take over the existing
facilities at Seventh Avenue and West Twelfth Street. We
aim to accumulate information here that will be invaluable
to existing health organizations who would re-establish
our full-service hospital.
We also hope
to inspire the support of private philanthropic
sources which could expedite the re-establishment
of the hospital when the time comes. We are seeking like-minded
community activists, donors, fundraisers and planners to
join us in this initiative. But we won't stop there.
We'll also
develop a plan for a new medical center based
on Open Source philosophy and practice.
This philosophy is more open, less antagonistic and more
capable of determining what is in the public interest than
the usual political process. Information technology to facilitate
communication challenges is key to the practicality of the
process and we will be adding collaborative knowledege management
systems to this website for that purpose in the near future.
Please check
back to this website as we bring our technological solutions
for community collaboration online.
To join our mailing list, send an email
to newsletter@hospitalnow.org
with subscribe as the subject and your email address
as the message.
We are
all volunteers. To
join our team, please call project leader Jonathan Slaff
at (212) 924-0496 or email us at hospitalnow.contact "at"
gmail.com.
Jonathan
Slaff
Barbara Reuther
Elizabeth Adam
Helaina Hovitz
Ollie Piantieri
Celia Wu
Ira Hyman