Forest Hills City Council Candidates Demand More Hospital Beds

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — A candidate vying for City Council in Forest Hills called on the state’s health commissioner to expand hospital access across Queens, an issue that has long-been contentious in the neighborhood and the borough at large.

The letter, which was penned last week by Lynn Schulman, a City Council candidate in District 29, asks State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to not only stop reducing hospital capacity in Queens, but add more hospital beds to the borough — which is the most underserved per-capita of the city’s five boroughs.

Over 50 candidates and elected officials have since signed onto the letter, including a handful of comptroller and mayoral hopefuls and dozens of City Council candidates, three of whom are running for the District 29 seat alongside Schulmann.

“Our lives can not be put in jeopardy because of the government’s inability to make smart decisions about our public health,” the letter states. “We have needlessly lost loved ones, friends, and neighbors. The lives lost underscore that there is nothing more important than access to healthcare and to ensure that Queens will be under-served no more.”

The hospital crisis in Queens

Schulman, who previously worked in a hospital and whose campaign has largely been focused on the issue of hospital capacity, told the Queens Daily Eagle that the borough doesn’t have a plan for “large scale medical emergencies, not just the pandemic, but anything that would happen that would require hospitalization on a large scale,” she said.

While the pandemic has highlighted the shortage of hospital beds in Queens, this issue predates 2020.

St. Joseph’s Hospital in Flushing closed in 2004, followed by the closure of Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills in 2008 — the latter which has remained empty ever since amid years of stalled proposals.

In 2009 two more hospitals in the borough closed, including St. John’s Hospital in Elmhurst and St. Vincent Hospital, an offshoot of Manhattan-based St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center, which served the central Queens neighborhoods of Forest Hills and Rego Park, as well as others.

This March, the state Health Department considered proposals that would downsize the Rockaway Peninsula’s lone hospital, St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, to as little as 15 beds — one of several proposals for the facility that haven’t been decided upon for now, according to the Health Department.

The hospital crisis in Forest Hills

Schulman, told the Queens Daily Eagle that the far reaching healthcare crisis in the borough is a reason why she thinks so many people signed onto her letter.

“If you look at a lot of the platforms that folks have, they touch on hospitals or healthcare on some level. Healthcare is a major issue for everyone,” she said.

The issue is one that specifically resonates with several candidates running for office in Forest Hills, where the Parkway Hospital and St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center closures within a year of each other have remained an issue for over a decade.

“We have an obligation to support our seniors in Queens,” wrote District 29 City Council candidate Doug Shapiro, who signed onto the letter and co-wrote a piece in the Gotham Gazette about healthcare access for seniors.

“Demographically, the communities of Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, and Richmond Hill (City Council District 29) form one of the oldest areas in the city. We must take the initiative to increase our ability to care for our parents and grandparents,” he said, noting the importance of hospital capacity for Forest Hills specifically.

Aleda Gagarin and Avi Cyperstein, two other City Council candidates in the district also signed onto the letter.

Read the whole letter here.