By Nicole Breskin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
GREENWICH VILLAGE — Hundreds of people angry that an urgent care facility replacing St. Vincent’s Hospital may not be housed at the hospital's Greenwich Village site demanded Monday that an emergency room be opened there instead.
The community members vented their frustration to Mark Solazzo, chief operating office of North Shore-LIJ, the organization that will run the urgent care facility. Solazzo met with the group at the Little Red School House Monday night to update them on the status of plans for the facility, which will treat people for minor injuries and illnesses.
Eileen Dunn, who had worked at St. Vincent's for 24 years and is president of the local chapter of the New York State Nurses Association, said the community had expected an urgent care center to open immediately.
“We thought it was going to happen there, right away. Here we are and there’s still nothing," Dunn said.
“It fuels the frustration,” she added. “We don’t want urgent care, what we need is a hospital.”
Civil rights activist Yetta Kurland, who has gathered 2,500 signatures in support her group, Coalition for a New Village Hospital, agreed that an urgent care facility may not be enough for the community.
“God help us if we don’t even know what’s going on with the urgent care center,” she said. “We didn’t know what was happening with St. Vincent’s and it collapsed in a matter of days in a way that was so shocking to the moral consciousness of anyone who knows the importance of public health care to the community."
Terry Lynam, a vice president at North Shore-LIJ, said that the organization was only contracted by the state to provide an urgent care center and plans for any additional health services, such as a fully-functional emergency room, would have to go back through the state.
The urgent care center is slated to open in September on a temporary basis at the West 12th Street location for St. Vincent's. A long-term site has yet to be found.
