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Montefiore Medical Center Adds North Division

Former Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center Assets Acquired

Move Enhances Delivery of High Quality, Compassionate Healthcare to Community As Care and Services Continue

Montefiore Medical Center, one of New York City’s largest healthcare systems, today announced it has completed its acquisition of most of the assets of Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center (OLM). As a result of this acquisition, the former OLM becomes the North Division of Montefiore Medical Center.

The acquisition makes Montefiore a 1,491-bed academic medical center employing more than 16,000 associates serving the two million residents of the Bronx and Westchester County. There are no immediate plans for service changes and patient care will continue uninterrupted.

“We are enhancing the availability of high-quality, innovative healthcare and vital services in the Bronx and providing resources for our patients and the communities we serve,” said Steven M. Safyer, MD, President and CEO, Montefiore Medical Center.

“This preserves a location for healthcare delivery that the surrounding community has relied on for many years,” said Dr. Safyer.

Local residents now will have access to an even greater number of healthcare services in many more Montefiore locations throughout the Bronx and nearby Westchester.

“This is great news for the community,” said Congressman Charles B. Rangel, Chairman, House Ways and Means Committee. “At a time when people are increasingly worried about their healthcare options, local residents can rest assured that they are not just keeping services close to home, but are also getting the additional resources and management team of Montefiore Medical Center, one of our nation’s finest medical institutions.”

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Fordham University and New York Botanical Garden Form Acadmic Deal 

Hey, waitaminute!

Was that Fordham University and the New York Botanical Garden holding a love fest this week?

After all those years of bitter feuding over a gangly Erector set-like campus radio station transmission tower looming over the garden, a whole new period of peace and love seems to have sprouted.

In the latest embrace, officials from the two Bronx institutions signed an agreement Wednesday to cross-pollinate academic programs.

A joint graduate program will permit students to receive a master’s degree or doctorate from Fordham, “drawing upon the intellectual and physical resources of both the university and NYBG,” they said in a statement.

Garden President and CEO Gregory Long, who pointed out the two institutions have been “next door neighbors” for 115 years, joined Fordham President, the Rev. Joseph McShane, to officially ink the deal.

“There has never been a moment in American history when education, and research and concern for the biodiversity of the world, have been more important,” said Long.

McShane called it “a momentous occasion that links us, two institutions that reach across Southern Boulevard, to work together for the common good.”

Things were not always so rosy between the two neighbors.

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Push in Bronx for H.I.V. Test for All

Dr. Donna Futterman, left, with Rosita Gonzalez and colleagues at Montefiore Medical Center, helped the city shape the plan.

The New York City health department plans to announce on Thursday an ambitious three-year effort to give an H.I.V. test to every adult living in the Bronx, which has a far higher death rate from AIDS than any other borough. The campaign will begin with a push to make the voluntary testing routine in emergency rooms and storefront clinics, where city officials say that cumbersome consent procedures required by state law have deterred doctors from offering the tests.

“Routine would mean if you came into the emergency room for asthma or a broken leg, we test everyone for H.I.V., if they’re willing,” the health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said in an interview on Wednesday.

While Manhattan has long been the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in New York, with the highest incidence of both AIDS and H.I.V., the virus that causes it, the Bronx, with its poorer population, has far more deaths from the disease. Public health officials attribute this to people not getting tested until it is too late to treat the virus effectively, thus turning a disease that can now be managed with medication into a death sentence.

Several AIDS experts said on Wednesday that the Bronx campaign was the most aggressive testing effort they could recall in the nation. Two years ago, Washington, D.C., made a high-profile push to test 450,000 residents, enlisting celebrity endorsements and distributing 80,000 free testing kits, but the campaign resulted in only about 45,000 people being tested.

“What’s new here is that we are implementing it on this large a level,” said Dr. Donna Futterman, director of the adolescent AIDS program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, who helped New York develop the new program. “The Bronx has 1.3 million people. It’s bigger than most cities, bigger than Boston, bigger than Washington. We’re talking about a significant urban population.”

City officials estimate that 40 percent of the 830,000 people ages 18 to 64 in the Bronx have been tested for H.I.V. in the past year. Half of the remainder, about 250,000 people, have never been tested, and the goal is to test them first. Tests would be given at 40 designated sites, including clinics, community centers, churches and emergency rooms. Dr. Monica Sweeney, an assistant health commissioner for H.I.V. prevention, said the city had not set aside money specifically for the program, but would absorb the $12 cost of each test.

In organizing the campaign, which formally begins on Friday, Dr. Frieden has enlisted support from elected officials, health care providers and clergy members in the Bronx. But the proposal is raising some concerns.

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Filipina Teen Takes First Steps Thanks To Bronx Doctor

A 15-year-old girl has taken her first steps after doctors at a Bronx hospital straightened her severely clubbed feet, which were twisted backward and upside down.

The braces on Jingle Luis’ legs were removed Friday, about six weeks after her surgery at Montefiore Medical Center. Wearing casts and medical boots, she carefully walked on her reoriented feet.

The teen says she “can’t believe it” and is excited, but also a little afraid because she doesn’t know exactly what to do. Until the surgery, she used crutches to hobble on the tops of her feet.

Her surgeon, Dr. Terry Amaral, says the next steps are building up Jingle’s strength and stamina, and teaching her to walk.

Jingle lives in the Philippines. She came to New York in April to have the surgery.

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BRONX BOYS OF SUMMER 

The borough’s parks are all being renovated at once, so local teams are sharing crowded turf.

Construction equipment behind them and other teams all around, members of the Love Gospel Assembly Little League found themselves betwixt and between at one recent practice

A view of the Croton Water Filtration Plant under construction, looking northwest from the roof of Montefiore Medical Center.

A stream of cash pouring into the Parks Department budget has created a rehabilitation bonanza at Bronx parks, but the mostly welcome windfall is also displacing community sports teams and visitors to parks across the borough.

As an incentive for Bronx officials to agree to the construction of the nearly $3 billion Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park by the New York City Department of Environmental Preservation, the agency agreed to give the Parks Department $220 million to $260 million for rehabilitation projects at 63 parks around the borough.

The deal had one major provision: The money had to be spent by 2009. Officials in the borough aren’t completely sure why that deadline exists, but the result is a rush to spend. As the weather warmed up and both children’s and adults’ baseball teams hit the diamonds, they faced a flurry of rehabbing that’s made it hard to play.

Although park renovation sounds like a great thing to many, critics also fault the undertaking for including too little community input, benefiting disadvantaged neighborhoods like Hunts Point, Soundview and Highbridge less than other areas, and even possibly contravening DEP’s own charter.

“It’s inconveniencing a lot of people with the construction they’re doing,” said Anthony Robles, president of the Bronx Panthers youth football team. The Panthers were booted from the Williamsbridge Oval Park, in nearby Norwood, due to a construction project. Robles said he learned of the Oval project “right when they were coming in with the equipment and closing off the fields.”

Having to share their field, members of the Love Gospel Assembly Little League were forced to move due to several rain puddles at home plate. Coach Rory Gilbert said, “We have to coexist – but I have permits for this field.” Referring to two other large groups, including the young football players currently using the field, Gilbert added, “But I’m getting ready to start batting and if they have a problem with that, I really can’t do anything.”

Obtaining a field requires that an applicant fill out a form and pay an $8 per hour fee, with a two hour use minimum, but one Parks Department staffer explained: “The big problem is if we have the availability.”

When completed, Harris Park – where fences went up in April and several teams are now sharing one field – will have four new ball fields, a multipurpose field as well as a new track, playground and an exercise equipment room with showers.

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