Public Employee Press

Members help save Queens clinic

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

As budget cuts slammed the city health care system, the Health and Hospitals Corp. put three Queens neighborhood health centers on the chopping block.

The Charles R. Drew Clinic in Jamaica and the Sunnyside Clinic were shuttered June 30, but union members and Assembly member Barbara M. Clark mounted a campaign that won state funds to keep the Springfield Medical Clinic open for another six months.

“The clinic is vital to this community,” said Social Work Supervisor Michelle Naughton, a member of Health Services Employees Local 768.

Accesible health care

She said she was upset by the planned closure, “because there are a lot of people who just don’t have other accessible health care, and the location is excellent.” The clinic sits in the corner of a small shopping mall near the intersection of Merrick and Springfield boulevards.

Naughton, who provides psychosocial assessments, mental health services, HIV counseling and patient referrals, said the clinic is currently “seeing more people who are on the verge of being homeless and need referrals to shelters.”

In addition to the two clinics closed in Queens, HHC shut three satellite pharmacies and clinics in the High Bridge section of the Bronx and in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, in an effort to bridge a 2009 budget shortfall of $316 million. According to HHC President Alan Aviles, that gap may grow to $1 billion in 2010.

The city’s public hospital system sees 1.3 million patients annually and the corporation’s primary patient population is poor and uninsured. Under its charter, HHC can turn no one away; it faced an 8 percent increase in uninsured patients from 2007 to 2008.

To save the Springfield Gardens clinic, the union activists ran “an aggressive word-of-mouth campaign with members talking with people in the community about the importance of this clinic,” said Local 768 member Albert Willingham.

Patient Care Associate Jemaul Early said he was “devastated,” at the news that the clinic would close. A member of Municipal Hospital Employees Local 420, Early is a single dad who has worked in the clinic for five years and lives in the neighborhood.

As a PAC, Early works with children and does vision and hearing tests, checks vital signs and draws blood for tests. He is especially effective with the kids. “I have a way of calming them down before I draw their blood,” said Early, who has worked at HHC for 11 years.

“We are grateful that our lobbying efforts were able to keep the doors open at the Springfield clinic for our members to keep providing vital services to the community,” said Carmen Charles, president of Local 420. “But now we have to make sure the clinic stays open.”