Open Thread

look, when it comes to medical care manhattan is definitely top notch… i just googled this issue and 50 gazillion articles came up claiming it to be true..

here’s one..
“Manhattan Birth Certificate, Brooklyn AddressPublished: June 25, 2010
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Several Brooklyn women who chose Manhattan hospitals said that word of mouth had led them to Manhattan obstetricians or midwives, and that, in turn, brought them to the Manhattan hospitals where those providers had privileges. Kate Sweeney, a Park Slope communications consultant whose baby is due in January, said she had researched doctors at Brooklyn parenting sites, “and many of them were in Manhattan,” including the one she chose, whose “rave reviews” were more important than location.

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Graphic Fertility Flight.Dr. Iffath Hoskins, chairwoman of obstetrics at Lutheran Medical Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, said her hospital was trying to recruit well-known Manhattan doctors for that very reason. “No matter what we say, no matter what we build, no matter how we advertise, there may be patients who follow their doctors,” Dr. Hoskins said.

One of the strongest examples of fertility flight was in Fort Greene, in which births in the four Manhattan hospitals rose to 169 from 16 over the decade, while dropping at local hospitals including Brooklyn Hospital Center Downtown, University Hospital of Brooklyn and Long Island College Hospital. (Fort Greene births were up, however, at Methodist hospital.)

As Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, the Lower East Side and the East Village have grown wealthier, they have also experienced substantial growth in maternity patients who chose the big four Manhattan hospitals. At the same time, closer hospitals, like New York Downtown Hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital Center, lost maternity patients from their local neighborhoods, as did St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, the Village hospital that closed this year.

The big four Manhattan hospitals aggressively advertise and promote their reputations as institutions with the “best” doctors and safety records.

“I mean, why do you go to a Ritz-Carlton as opposed to a Motel 6?” said Dr. Michael Brodman, chairman of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center, who argued that it was the whole package of services a hospital provides, like a dedicated anesthesiologist for labor and delivery, that made a difference.

Several hospitals in Brooklyn are, like the Manhattan hospitals, capable of handling high-risk births.

Some hospitals in Brooklyn are fighting the perception that Manhattan hospitals are better. Neal Gorman, a spokesman for Lutheran, said his hospital had tried advertising and online videos. “I always thought if I had cancer, I would go to one of the New York hospitals,” a satisfied patient says on a Lutheran video that appeared on YouTube.

Dr. Hoskins noted that she had worked for more than 15 years at N.Y.U. before being recruited by Lutheran four years ago. “It’s not as if I forgot everything,” she said.

While more recent arrivals to Park Slope look across the river, Natasha Crewdson-Gleizer would be something of an iconoclast. She was born at Methodist in 1970 and raised by archetypal Park Slope parents of the old guard, a psychiatrist and a mother who teaches the Alexander Technique of posture and movement. When she became pregnant, some of her friends urged her to go to Manhattan, where they believed she would get better care in an emergency. But she also had friends who said good things about Methodist.

What convinced her, said Dr. Crewdson-Gleizer, a cognitive behavioral psychologist, “was that I had this vision of myself on the Brooklyn Bridge, laboring or giving birth and not being able to get to a hospital on time, and that to me seemed very scary.”

Her daughter, Annette, was born May 16 at Methodist. Dr. Crewdson-Gleizer’s labor came on so quickly that she and her husband had to hail a cab to get to the hospital just four blocks away because she could not walk. She gave birth in half an hour. “It’s also easy to get the baby home,” she said. “We could just put her in the stroller and walk her a few blocks. Very nice.”

DeLepp, if I bought that converted church,(for far less bucks, of course) I’d have to strip every stick of furniture out of there, and get rid of it, and get some people in to distress the joint, and give it some character. It’s too perfect. It looks like a high-end new built McMansion. I hated the furniture, too, for the same reason. It looked like it was all picked from a furniture showroom. (“This is our McMansion line”…) There was no personality to the house at all. That may be because it’s a show house, not a real person’s home, but sheesh.

Rob, Dave does your taxes FOR FREE for two years, and all you can do is berate him in public for not knowing about a $62 credit? Plus you wanted him to do it overnight in the first place? And then not a word of thanks? Nice.

From HuffPo

7 Sites You Should Be Wasting Time On Right Now

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/13/7-sites-you-should-be-wasting_n_848228.html#s263551&title=That_Can_Be

I have a diaspora of Irish cousins in Australia, Italy, Greece, all over the US, etc. & FB is a great way to keep up w/ them.
Have also come across a few pals from elementary school via FB & that’s fun. Linked in has turned up a few old friends (that’s friends from long ago, not that they’re long in the tooth.)