LOCKPORT, N.Y. — In Lockport, the inevitable fate for healthcare workers at a Lockport hospital is becoming a reality, leaving 337 employees at Eastern Niagara Hospital Monday night knowing that their days are numbered.
Not just as employees, but as a resource for their community.
“We don't want a disruption in services out in the community,” said Cathy DiFlavio, administrative organizer at 1199 SIEU. “That's the worst thing that we could possibly do.”
The realization comes in response to a WARN notice issued Friday, announcing the closure of Eastern Niagara Hospital on June 17 for financial reasons.
It follows a 2020 agreement between ENH and Catholic Health that would keep the hospital open until the opening of Catholic Health’s new Lockport Memorial Hospital this fall.
Just two months ago, ENH received $8.9 million dollars in state funding that would allow the hospital to keep its doors open until June, now leaving a community of 80,000 temporarily without emergency medical care.
“It's unfortunate that the funding isn't there to continue it until the new Lockport Memorial Hospital opens and that has a lot to do with upstate New York and the Medicaid reimbursement that we get,” DiFlavio said.
According to the National Institute of Health, the average EMS response time nationwide is approximately seven minutes.
That wait could be nearly three times as long for Eastern Niagara County residents in life-or-death situations this summer.
“There is a concern, and the members have voiced that and that,” DiFlavio said. “They've always put the patients in the community first, and as I hear them speak and bring their concerns forward, that's still what they're doing.”
For those members — some of which have been serving this community their entire careers — while they know there will be a job waiting for them, it’s the permanent change in their community that they fear most.
“There's something to be said about a small community and a small hospital,” DiFlavio. “They're passionate, they're dedicated. They are dedicated to these patients and to the entire community. They don't want to see this come to an end.”