As any Blue Ivy will tell you, the growing gap between the rich and poor is increasingly seen in the swanky wings of the city's hospitals. At Mount Sinai, if a patient staying in one of the $1,600-night suites wants something other than Jello or creamed corn, the staff obliges. "If they have a craving for lobster tails and we don't have them on the menu, we'll go out and get them," the hospital's hospitality manager tells the Times. At the "Greenberg 14 South" wing of NewYork-Presbyterian, patients paying $2,400 a night have butlers. No word on whether the suppositories are made with gold leaf. more ›

A Brooklyn man is suing the NYPD for allegedly forcing him to submit to X-Rays and CAT scans to find "contraband" in his stomach, and then making him foot the $9,530 hospital bill even after the charges were dropped. Couldn't the police have just baked it into a pie? more ›

We've already had a dose of bad news today about the fictional Special Victim's Unit, and now comes bad news for the real-life equivalent: in the midst of the budget crunch, the city is planning on axing its hospitals' special victim's units. "What kind of message are we sending victims of sexual assault?" Brooklyn City Councilman David Greenfield rhetorically asked the News. more ›

Every new year the media likes to make a big fuss over the first baby born in New York. The mayor often even shows up to congratulate the wee one! So, naturally, landing that perfectly-timed pregnant woman is a big deal at local hospitals. Thankfully c-sections "don't count," or it sounds like some of these maternity wards would just be ripping the babes out so as to claim the first. more ›

Despite an FBI study that shows many former police officers were pressure to fudge crime statistics, Mayor Bloomberg insists that nobody is trying to hide anything nowadays. He said on his radio show, "No. You know, it's, in this day and age, I love this, gonna cook the books. With the press talking all the time, with everybody having Twitter and Facebook and everything, do you really think you could keep anything private anymore? C'mon." Twitter: Keeping cops honest since 2006. more ›

Sure, moms in the "brownstone belt" might pooh-pooh Manhattan life as too fast, too cramped and not having enough food co-ops, but when it comes time to have their babies they seem to be oddly drawn to the borough. According to New York Times stats, hospitals in neighborhoods like Park Slope, Fort Greene and Cobble Hill have lost patients, while four Manhattan hospitals' birth rates have gone up 31%. The total number of births in the city has gone up just 3% in the last ten years. more ›

New data from the American Hospital Association shows that Queens' hospitals are some of the most overcrowded in the country. A combination of hospital closings, a growing population and a high percentage of elderly residents have put the 10 remaining hospitals in the borough in a dangerous position. Kenneth E. Raske, president of Greater New York Hospital Association, told the Wall Street Journal, "They have the lowest bed-to-population ratio of any of the boroughs. It could precipitate a public-health crisis if one of them were to go down." more ›

Low five? The Press Ganey Emergency Department Pulse Report 2009 rated NYC last among the nation's 10 largest metropolitan areas for satisfaction in emergency-department care, and New York State was 46th in overall emergency room waiting time. South Dakota came in at #1 with an average waiting time of 172 minutes, while New York narrowly beat out New Mexico with an average of 288 minutes—nearly 5 hours. (Utah came in dead last with a 408 minute wait time.) Dr. Peter Viccellio of Stony Brook University Medical Center tells Crain's "Sometimes, we can’t even spare someone to go into the waiting area and talk to patients and tell them what’s going on." He also admits to having to relocate patients to beds in hospital corridors to make room for incoming patients. Last summer a shocking video showed a woman being ignored after she died in an ER waiting room. The silver lining for NYC? This report emphasizes patient satisfaction with wait time, not with the care they eventually receive, so let's just assume we're #1 when patients eventually see a doctor—as they say, the best health comes to those who wait. more ›

If swine flu makes a comeback this fall, city officials want to be prepared. They've been conducting a postmortem review of the spring's swine flu outbreak as they come up with plans for a possible "second wave," plans which the NY Times reports are focusing on preventing city ERs from being swamped. City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley says the spring outbreak caught hospitals off-guard: "The thought that there would be large numbers of people in emergency rooms hadn’t been well thought through, so that’s one thing we need to address." So, in order to stop everyone with a stuffy nose from heading to the nearest ER, officials are considering a daily "public messaging system" that would give updates on vital swine flu information, not unlike the way winning lottery numbers are announced. Other swine flu countermeasures—like closing schools or even mandating staggered work hours—are also being readied in the event the virus comes back with a vengeance. At this point, Dr. Farley says it's basically a waiting game: "If you look at the history of new strains of influenza...almost all of them have had a second wave. It doesn’t necessarily occur within the next six months; it might occur a couple of years later. But almost all returned." more ›