Muhlenberg in Morristown

Gov. Corzine and Health Commissioner Heather Howard placed the communities served by Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center in the Morristown Service Area, in a document designed to "Rationalize Healthcare" through a heavy focus on hospital closings and the resulting redistribution of health care resources.

This expensive, outsourced perspective on New Jersey geography was developed by the same consultants that produced the very short, controversial, travel times to alternative acute care hospitals. This, now "historic" report cost taxpayer dollars when accurate data could have been calculated, in house, by weights and measures or by google and mapquest, for free.

The other Hospital Service Area options include New Brunswick that borders communities served by Muhlenberg and are listed in the travel times to alternate sources of care. At least the Newark service area is accessible by public transportation. Seniors and people without cars can reach Robert Wood Johnson, in New Brunswick, by taking multiple trains with a change in Newark.

The Neighborhood Health Center, long ago moved virtually out of Plainfield, and now borders Greenbrook and Dunellen in Somerset and Middlesex Counties. These women who tend not to have cars, were sent to Elizabeth, virtually Newark, to give birth? A long way to transport a woman in labor and a difficult trip to visit a newborn that doesn't come home with the mother. At the very least, Elizabeth should have been restored to the Raritan Valley Train Line. People doing business with Union County and the court system would help make the route more profitable.

Have you ever tried to get to Morristown from Muhlenberg? Why was there no travel time to Morristown included in the alternatives to care at Muhlenberg?

New Jersey Acute Care Hospital by Market Area
http://www.nj.gov/health/rhc/finalreport/documents/appendix_3.pdf