Residents Speak Out on Hospital Impact Study 

Mark Hannay is an East Village resident who facilitates the “Save Beth Israel and New York Eye & Ear” campaign. “I have always relied on Beth Israel to be there for me since I moved into the East Village 45 years ago. I’ve used the Emergency Department after two serious bike accidents and once for a pedestrian sidewalk injury.”

Kanielle Hernandez is a lifelong resident of the Lower East Side. “I was born there in 1986 and, as a chronic asthmatic, I have depended on it throughout my entire life. When my son was 18 months old, he was admitted for treatment of a respiratory virus. Then, last spring, when my son caught the flu, we had to take him to the emergency room because the urgicenter was not equipped to handle his medical needs. I fell ill the following day, while six months pregnant, and my partner rushed me to Beth Israel at 5 a.m. Our community needs a hospital in that location, not another luxury development.”

Dr. Kimberly Lovie Murdaugh lives in the Lower East Side and did her internal medicine internship at Beth Israel. “I moved here as a young doctor because I wanted to be part of Beth Israel’s legendary history of taking care of New Yorkers. But when I arrived, I was surprised to see how the hospital was in decline: floors and sections of the ICU closing, major services being removed and sent uptown to Mount Sinai Hospital. But the people who worked there, and the community we served, really lived up to what I believed New York to be. People from all walks of life still come to Beth Israel for care. We cared so much about the community and served everyone with pride. To think that a hospital like this can close is unconscionable. It’s unethical to deny care just because it is not profitable.”

Mike Schweinsburg is a disability rights activist. “As president of both the Eight BCD Block Association and the 504 Dems and a former patient of Beth Israel, I can speak of the sense of worry and loss my neighbors, the disability community and I are all feeling due to the potential closures. For centuries, these healthcare facilities have been the nearby one-stop medical destinations for the area’s lower income and people of color communities. We also have a population of seniors with disabilities that is 44 percent higher than anywhere else in New York City. Mount Sinai’s callous proposal to dismantle and scatter their services all over Manhattan will have severe medical consequences. In our view, Mount Sinai is abandoning the healthcare business and jumping into the real estate business.”