Mount Vernon announces plan to invest and save hospital
Montefiore Health Systems announced plans to close Mount Vernon Hospital in October 2019 and use state funds to build an emergency department a mile away.
With tears in her eyes, Alexina Nechis watched as the place she's called home for 46 years was saved.
"When I thought we were closing, it broke my heart. But to hear that we're not and to hear that we're going to expand and get back to what we were and even better, these are tears of joy," she said.
Nechis works in Mount Vernon Hospital's emergency department, which, like, most other parts of the medical facility, has been underfunded and underused for most of the last decade.
In October 2019, Montefiore Health System announced a plan to shutter the hospital and instead use $41 million in funding from New York state to build an emergency department roughly 1 mile away.
The plan would have forced residents who needed an operating room and long-term stays to seek treatment at neighboring facilities in New Rochelle or the Bronx.
The announcement sparked years of outrage, community discussions and rallies calling on Montefiore to reverse its decision.
So on Monday, nearly five years after that initial decision, the city and health system announced a new plan to take that $41 million from the state and use it to invest in the current hospital.
"This community needs us so desperately, and they need us to provide quality care," Nechis said. "We can really make sure that our patients can get what they need, when they need it, so they don't have to go to other communities."
The hospital revitalization will expand and modernize critical areas of the hospital, including redesigning the emergency department, transforming operating rooms and modernizing the Family Health Center.
Once completed, the emergency room will increase capacity by 150% annually, expand the number of operating rooms, outfit them with state-of-the-art equipment and modernize the patients' access to primary care doctors.
"This is monumental, this is an opportunity for Montefiore and the city of Mount Vernon to come together to transform health care," Mount Vernon Hospital executive director Regginald Jordan said.
Today's announcement was a major promise delivered by Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard to ensure reliable health care remains available to residents in the city.
"It's a commitment to the health, the well-being and the future of our city," she said.
Montefiore has already submitted the documentation to reallocate the funding from the original proposal to this new master plan but will still need final approval from the state to move forward.
Hospital officials believe they will have everything submitted by the end of this year and are hoping for an expedited approval process.
If everything goes according to plan, the first renovations to the new emergency rooms could begin as early as the first half of next year.
The entire project should take anywhere between three to five years to complete.
