By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

"Hospitals don’t win high ratings with buildings and computers alone. It takes dedicated, skilled, caring workers."

My heart was full March 21 as I joined Mayor Michael Bloomberg and top HHC officials at the opening of the $173 million Acute Care Pavilion at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Together with the mayor, I walked the halls of the new building and marveled at the tremendous improvements — the modern, high-tech inpatient tower, the enlarged emergency department that has the first Level 1 pediatric trauma center in the Bronx, and an imaging center loaded with the most sophisticated equipment available.

In February, Bellevue opened a new ambulatory care pavilion, and vast improvements are under way or recently completed at Harlem, Kings County, Coney Island, Elmhurst and Queens General.

We fought with our backs to the wall to survive the long, painful years when the city was fiscally bleeding its hospitals, when facilities like Harlem Hospital were falsely accused of providing inferior service and former Mayor Giuliani tried to close and privatize HHC institutions. In coalition with community groups, DC 37 saved hospitals and thousands of jobs.

Today’s giant leap forward is possible because for the first time we have a mayor who takes pride in our public hospitals, their employees and the care they provide. Mayor Bloomberg and I share the belief that all New Yorkers deserve the best possible health care, regardless of their ability to pay. With his help, the city Health and Hospitals Corp. is realizing that goal.

Once we had to picket with signs charging that HHC hospitals were on the critical list. But right now, HHC runs some of the best hospitals in town and even in the nation:

You don’t win ratings like this with bricks and mortar and computers alone.

I know from my own work as a Nurse’s Aide and Operating Room Technician in a Chicago public hospital that it takes employees who are skilled and dedicated. I believe that people who devote their lives to caring for others are special. Two great examples are DC 37 members Rosetta Liburd, a Clerical Associate at Bellevue, and Dawn Alexander, a Patient Care Tech at Brooklyn’s Susan Smith McKinney Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

“Total care” for patients
Ms. Liburd, a member of Local 1549, holds lives in her hands. She knows that a single paperwork or computer mistake in registration could give a patient the wrong medicine or blood. But still, she says, “We deal with individual people, not just numbers. I know every last patient in this clinic, and often their spouses and children.” She chose the dialysis unit because her brother died while on dialysis.

“Saving lives means a lot to me. I care,” she said.

Ms. Alexander, a member of Local 420, provides what she calls “total care.” Some of her patients can’t do anything for themselves. She feeds them, bathes them, dresses them — everything. “Some families visit and help us, but others just dump people, so we become their real family,” she said. “This job is about caring for patients like loved ones.”

The 18,000 members of DC 37 locals at HHC put the care in health care — whether they provide life-giving nutrition, scrub the floors to stop disease from spreading, sanitize the laundry or assist surgeons in the operating room. Nurses, Social Workers and Psychologists provide direct care as Hospital Care Investigators help patients get their benefits. Skilled and dedicated Laborers, truck drivers, computer experts, Engineers and Accountants are vital to HHC’s mission of caring for the sick and injured.

Together, our union members at HHC are the heart of quality health care — because they care.