By Cynthia Koons
The president of St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center resigned two weeks ago as one of the company’s three hospitals in Queens still waits to know who its new owner will be.
Just weeks after the president of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Fresh Meadows resigned, David Campbell stepped down as head of the hospital’s parent system, St. Vincent’s.
This comes as St. Vincent’s continues to search for a new operator for St. Joseph’s Hospital, which is one of the hospital consortium’s three locations in Queens.
Due to substantial operating losses across the board in 2003, the St. Vincent’s system decided to relinquish its sponsorship of St. Joseph’s pending the search for a new owner of the hospital.
“There has not been any substantive progress on reaching an agreement,” St. Vincent’s spokesman Michael Fagan said. “We’re still just in preliminary discussions with other operators.”
St. Vincent’s announced it was relinquishing its ownership of St. Joseph’s two months ago, at the same time it laid off six nurses from the Fresh Meadows facility. Within the past year, there have been 25 layoffs at St. Joseph’s Hospital. There are 463 employees at the facility.
Ron Weingartner, the executive director of St. Joseph’s, is the second leader to resign from the hospital within the past year. Campbell is resigning after four years of running St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center.
“In discussions with the board, (Campbell) came to the decision that it was time for something new for himself,” Fagan said.
The president of St. Vincent’s is accountable to a board of directors that is co-chaired by Bishop Joseph Sullivan from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and incoming Sister Jane Iannucelli from the Sisters of Charity Healthcare in Staten Island.
Sullivan and Iannucelli’s organizations joined with St. Vincent’s to create the hospital consortium in 2000. The entire system comprises eight hospitals citywide.
St. Vincent’s hospitals primarily serve patients on Medicaid or who are uninsured.
Kenneth Cohen, chairman of the St. Joseph’s Community Advisory Board, said he believes a lack of insured patients is one reason the Fresh Meadows hospital might have trouble finding a new owner.
St. Joseph’s “will never be the institution that will make the large profit that we feel in the community St. Vincent’s is looking for,” Cohen said.
He helped organize a candlelight vigil two weeks ago to demonstrate the community’s solidarity and support for finding a new operator. He said he worries that Campbell’s resignation from St. Vincent’s might slow the process of finding an owner for St. Joseph’s.
“I would imagine anything that is happening at the executive level has a major impact,” he said. “Even though St. Vincent’s and the administration will say, ‘no,’ if you really look at St. Joseph’s, just the size alone it’s the scapegoat.”
The St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center board said it is looking for collaborative opportunities for other hospitals in Brooklyn and Queens as well.
Juliet Lewis, the spokeswoman for St. Joseph’s, said last month that an excess of hospital beds in Queens may account for the dropping number of patients at the Fresh Meadows facility.
Census numbers show that only 75 of the 106 beds at that hospital are used regularly. Founded in 1961, the hospital has 21 beds for psychiatric in-patients as well as specialized facilities for eye, wound and foot care.
Reach reporter Cynthia Koons by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 141.
