Rockaway takes step toward new trauma hospital, but major questions remain
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City Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers Rockaway Trauma Center Task Force released a report this week calling for the building of a new level one or two trauma facility. Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit
By Ryan Schwach
It’s been over a decade since Rockaway’s Peninsula Hospital shuttered its doors. The closure was the start of what locals have described as a dwindling and inadequate healthcare system in Queens’ southernmost community, which often posts among the highest rates of child mortality, shootings and homicides.
In the years since the 2012 closure, Rockaway residents and local leaders have demanded a level one trauma hospital, or a hospital equipped to deliver a full range of care to trauma patients, be built on the peninsula.
And while that dream has mostly appeared to be far-flung, it never has appeared as more of a possibility than it did last week, when lawmakers said the city took an important step toward bringing a new hospital – or updating an existing one – to the Rockaway peninsula.
Last week, the Far Rockaway Healthcare Access Task Force, which was formed by the City Council in 2022, issued a report on the state of healthcare in the Rockaways along with its recommendations for improving the current landscape where “residents are forced to leave the peninsula to receive necessary, life-saving care.”
And while lawmakers, including local City Councilmember and creator of the task force Selvena Brooks-Powers, said that the report has now laid the groundwork for what they hope will eventually be a level one or two trauma center, the report also leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
The 24-page report sums up a lot of what was already known about the desire to bring a level one trauma to the peninsula, but lacks concrete answers as to where, when and how a center would be built in the Rockaways.
However, Brooks-Powers and other task force advocates are calling it a new milestone for the peninsula’s lofty aspirations.
The report details the conclusions gathered from seven task force meetings, held from October 2022 to November 2023, and seeks to lay out the argument for why Rockaway is deserving of a level one or a level two trauma center – the two most comprehensive types of hospitals.
“The report was really a compilation of many conversations that were had, over 500 surveys that were conducted and countless data that was researched and combed over and discussed to really compile and, as I often say, intellectualize the conversation around the trauma facility,” Brooks-Powers said to the Eagle on Thursday. “So it was important to really put the data to the feelings and the wishes of the community in one place, and I think that's what the report was able to do.”
“We knew that something was taken from us and deserve to get it back,” she added.
The data laid out in the report intends to show a need and desire for the trauma facility.
According to the report, there were at least 700 EMS calls for incidents of trauma on the Rockaway peninsula from October 2021 to September 2022. The overall number of trauma calls during that time is likely higher, the report says. Calls responded to by Hatzalah, the Jewish volunteer EMS organization that often serves the deeply orthodox Jewish community in Far Rockaway, were not included in the report.
The Trauma Center Task Forces’ 24-page report lays out conclusions made in the last two years, but still leaves some unanswered questions about whether or not a trauma center can actually be built any time soon on the Rockaway peninsula. Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit
Though some have made arguments that the number of trauma calls on the peninsula doesn’t justify building and staffing a new hospital, Brooks-Powers says otherwise.
“The data in this report builds on [a survey and] a previous assessment and showed an even deeper need for a trauma facility,” said Brooks-Powers.
And while the current number justify a new level one trauma center on their own, Brooks-Powers said the need will only grow in the near future.
Rockaway has been one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the city and is largely expected to grow further in the coming decade. In 2022, Community Board 14 was predicting a population boom of over 30,000 people by 2027 as large scale housing developments in Edgemere and downtown Far Rockaway are constructed.
“I think where government often fails is when we build for the current dynamic, as opposed to building for what we know is to come,” said Brooks-Powers. “What we know is, we are building thousands of units of housing on the Rockaway peninsula…and we continue to grow.”
She added that even if a trauma center were to be announced this year, it would be at least for five years until it was actually up and running.
“Think about where will Rockaway be in four and five years with all of these housing units that the city is building right now in our community, so we can't focus on today's numbers,” she said.
Unanswered questions
The report, although not intended to have every aspect of the plan laid out, lacks concrete answers about some of the largest questions related to a trauma facility in the Rockaways, including how it will be paid for and where it would actually be built.
In a community survey included in the report, 90 percent of respondents said that they would prefer that a trauma facility be built in a new building, rather than enhance an existing site, which in Rockaway’s case could only be St. John’s Episcopal in Far Rockaway.
St. John’s, Rockaway’s only remaining hospital since the closing of Peninsula Hospital, has been the destination for millions in funding from elected officials in recent years, but has also seen a dwindling reputation in the community.
Leapfrog, an independent nonprofit that issues hospital grades, has routinely given low grades to St. John’s, including a D grade in the fall of 2023, which came after the hospital received five consecutive C grades.
In their own 2023 report, St. John’s itself found it unlikely that Rockaway had enough cases to justify a trauma center.
“The volume of trauma incidents in Far Rockaway is unlikely to sustain trauma program verification,” their report said, as referenced in the task force’s Tuesday report.
Although the report claims building a trauma facility in St. John’s would be a possibility, Brooks-Powers called the scenario unlikely.
But there is space for a new building, both the councilmember and report claim.
According to the report, a plot of land on a piece of NYCHA-owned property around Beach 59th Street and Beach 62nd Street could serve as a fruitful place to build a new healthcare facility. The land is currently vacant and is fairly centrally located.
That is an area that we’d like to further explore in partnership with the [Adams] administration,” Brooks-Powers said.
Working with the Adams Administration, is, as of right now, the actual next step for the plan.
Supporters of the plan are hoping the mayor allocates $150 to $200 million in his latest budget, the price tag for the trauma center, the task force estimates.
“We are having high level meetings with administration and with the state about getting the support first, starting with the administration, trying to get the funding secured for the hospital and working in partnership to work with the state for the necessary certifications that would be required for this,” Brooks-Powers said.
Brooks-Powers said that she hopes to get the funding into the city’s 2025 fiscal budget, which has a June 30 deadline, but she knows there are still aspects of the plan that need to be figured out. It will likely be some time before Rockway sees a trauma center, if it is to see one at all, she admitted.
“We are making steps, taking strides on this issue,” she said. “We recognize that this is not something that's going to happen overnight, whether we get it in this budget or the next, but it is our intention to get the funding as soon as possible, because the sooner we get the funding, the sooner other pieces necessary come to play.”
