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Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, January 27, 2016
St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital joins Montefiore
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and Montefiore Health
System have made it official. The hospital has merged
with Montefiore after receiving formal approval from
the state and the Federal Trade Commission earlier this
month.
“Our neighbors will continue to receive the same great
care from the same dedicated doctors, nurses and staff,
only with greater access to specialty care…” said Joan
Cusack-McGuirk, St. Luke’s interim president and CEO.
Montefiore Health System operates the Montefiore
Hospital and the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore,
as well as several medical facilities in the Bronx and
Westchester County.
“There is a real synergy between our organizations,”
St. Luke’s spokeswoman Katherine Dabroski said last
week. “If there is a gap in care, Montefiore will help
bring the experts to (St. Luke’s) and if that is not possible,
we will have a relationship within that network of care.
Montefiore is not looking to remove the care out of the
community, it is quite the opposite.”
Dabroski said no job losses would result from the
merger.
The hospital announced the creation of a “passive parent relationship” with Montefiore in October.
St. Luke’s had been searching for a “strategic partner”
to enhance services and “prepare the organization for the
St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital has become part of the Montefiore Health System.
anticipated changes in health care delivery” since early
2014, according to a hospital statement in October.
“We are confident that by becoming part of Montefiore
Health System, we will be able to serve our community in
City fire chief charged
Continued from page 1
Mike Vatter has resigned from his position as chief,” he said.
Ciaravino said he had met with the
fire and building departments to discuss
moving forward and vowed to turn the
“crisis” into an “opportunity” to improve
services. “We want you to know you’re
in good hands,” he told residents. “You
should feel as safe as you did before.”
Ahlers said the fire department was
coping with the loss of its chief on
Tuesday. “We work well under pressure,”
he said. “It’s part of the job.” Ahlers
added, he doesn’t want Vatter’s case “to
reflect on the entire fire department.”
“This is not the City of Newburgh Fire
Department,” said Ahlers. “We are willing to step up and do our job to keep the
city safe and move the fire department
forward.”
Ahlers, who has worked at the fire
department since 1999, said he would
apply for the position of fire chief once
the civil service exam was available for
the job.
Among other recent projects, Vatter
had been working on getting state funding for code enforcement and completing
inspections of vacant properties. Vatter
and staff had stepped up inspections of
rental properties following the deaths of
three people due to carbon monoxide-poisoning in a building on Lander Street last
year.
At a Distressed Property Task Force
meeting in December, Vatter reported
that staff had just completed inspections of [وH