As portions of the Lakeshore Hospital campus continue to operate on borrowed time, the state Health Department maintains that everything is being done to make the transition as smooth as possible.

In an e-mail to the OBSERVER this week, Health Department spokesman Jeffrey Hammond reiterated that the decision to close the Irving facility has the support of the state. “The Brooks-TLC board of directors made the decision to close its TLC campus as part of its long-term sustainability plan and then submitted a closure plan to the department,” he wrote. “The New York state Department of Health will continue to work with the leadership of Brooks-TLC and the state offices of Mental Health and Addiction Services & Supports to ensure there is no interruption in essential services.”

According to the Brooks Hospital website, there are eight members on the board of directors. They include: Christopher Lanski, chair; Dr. James Wild, chair-elect; Louis DiPalma, treasurer; Dr. Dana Anderson, Andrew Burr, The Honorable Timothy Cooper, Christina Jimerson and Mary LaRowe.

Though the official closing of the campus was to occur Jan. 1., portions of the health-care facility that serve the northern Chautauqua and southern Erie County region remain open. Both the emergency room, which received a full renovation within the last five years and the behavioral disorders health unit, which through this week was continuing to treat at least 15 in-patients, are still functioning.

While no one has officially indicated a closing date for both units, the date of Thursday continues to be brought to the attention of the OBSERVER. Officials from the state Office of Mental Health were contacted by the OBSERVER regarding the future and were expected to be in touch with us sometime this week.

For now, however, workers at the facility are in limbo in a search for answers regarding the future of Lakeshore while the possible building of a new Brooks Memorial Hospital in Fredonia remains unclear.

Lanski, in a letter in today’s edition on Page A4 writes about the struggles facing rural health-care providers. “With a new facility plan for Brooks, recognition of the broad primary and secondary service area the hospital supports, and the population density of northern Chautauqua County, it became clear that the TLC campus could not be sustained,” he said.

“Every consideration was made to try to accommodate behavioral health and chemical dependency services into the new hospital, but that would require additional capital dollars that are not available.”

Brooks’ new location is slated for the former Cornell Cooperative Extension site opposite the Fredonia Central Schools on East Main Street. New York state committed $70 million to building the facility since 2016, but nearly four years later there has been no construction at this site or the previous one chosen about a half-mile east off Route 20 in the town of Pomfret.

Lanski also disapproved of a recent Publisher’s notebook column in this newspaper on Jan. 3 that was critical of Kaleida Health, a partner of Brooks-TLC. “Despite the lack of any legal ownership or control, Kaleida Health has supported hospital providing in-kind services (no cost) that Brooks-TLC would otherwise need to provide at a significant cost or purchase from another provider.”

Brooks-TLC, however, is currently paying Kaleida through a management agreement that allows LaRowe to be in its chief executive officer position.