Joan Quigley, president of the North Hudson Community Action Corp., will retire at the end of the year

Every year more than 55,000 The people of New Jersey rely on a health network for their primary care: the North Hudson Community Action Corp. (NHCAC).

More than half of these patients live in Hudson County, particularly in the northern half, and live on low salaries. Many are immigrants. If there was any doubt about the need Before 2020, the NHCAC was a regional lifeline during the coronavirus pandemic.

Next year, for the first time in more than a decade. Joan Quigley, President of the NHCAC since 2013, announced this week that she will retire at the end of the year.

Quigley’s retirement marks not only a transitional moment for the NHCAC, but also the end of her decades-long career in public service, the State Assembly and health care administration.

The only work she plans to continue in the new year is her weekly column in the Jersey Journal.

“I’ve been lucky,” she said, noting that she has been working in health care for 50 years. “I like challenges. I’ve enjoyed most of them.”

The year Quigley leaves NHCAC, the network will be 60 years old. For its first 30 years, it provided social services, beginning with the Head Start early childhood education program. These continue to this day and include housing, vocational and immigration services, but in 1994 it expanded its operations fully to health care and never looked back.

Nearly half of NHCAC’s adult patients are uninsured, while another 42% are covered by Medicaid. NHCAC serves patients at 10 locations in Hudson, Bergen, and Passaic counties and operates on the principle that preventive care is worthwhile for patients of all income levels. Its Federally Qualified Health Centers allow NHCAC to access federal funding and additional Medicaid reimbursement because it serves populations that would otherwise be underserved.

When Quigley was hired to lead the organization, she served as vice president at Hoboken University Medical Center. She had contributed it remained open even when it was heavily in debt.

North Hudson was new to her. She grew up in Jersey City and that was the area she represented in the State Assembly from 1994 to 2011.

Her nervousness subsided when she found stable organization and camaraderie among her new colleagues, she said.

Even the strongest organizations could not prevent a global catastrophe. Within seven years The biggest challenge of her time at the NHCAC came when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and infection rates were particularly high in North Hudson.

But she doesn’t shudder when she thinks back to that time. Instead, she is proud and said she was proud even then because of the rapid and comprehensive response to the pandemic.

“We were in a unique position to help people,” she explained. “We wanted to do testing right away and of course there was no vaccine at that point, but at least we could tell people whether they had it or not.”

When colleagues and patients were skeptical about the new vaccine, she was the first to get vaccinated and was keen to serve as a role model.

“Then we went to every place where we could vaccinate people,” she said. “We went from town to town. In West New York we went to the police station. In Weehawken we went to the first aid station. In Kearny we went to the water company gas station. The coldest place I’ve ever been in my life.”

She cites the rescue of the Hoboken Hospital, then called St. Mary Hospital, The biggest challenge her career in health care. The threat of closure came after the closure of St. Francis Hospital in Jersey City, a decision Quigley did not make alone when she was its director, but for which she nevertheless said she bore much of the public blame.

Almost every avenue had to be exhausted to save St. Mary’s and the hospital came close to failure before a new bill was passed that would allow the city to take over the hospital.

Now, as she watches the hospital struggle to stay open under CarePoint Health’s management, she gets emotional. Her NHCAC patients need local hospitals in addition to the services NHCAC provides, she stressed, often just for basic procedures like an appendectomy.

“We can’t remove the appendix, but they don’t have to (leave the county to) drive to Barnabas or Hackensack to have their appendix removed,” she said. “It’s a pretty simple thing to do.”

Quigley’s office is decorated with miniature police cars she has collected on her travels and with commemorative plaques that she says she plans to store in boxes.

She has already bought the dress for her farewell party, but is not quite sure how the transition from a seven-day job to working as a pure columnist will feel.

Slowing down, she said, would be hard.

“I’m happiest when my adrenaline is pumping,” Quigley said. “I’ve always been that way.”