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Public Employee Press
HHC avoids Patakis
knife By ALFREDO ALVARADO After months
of speculation over the threat of severe cuts and possible closings of HHC facilities,
DC 37 hospital workers can now breathe easy. Gov. George Patakis
Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century finally released its
long awaited report at a packed news conference Nov. 28 and officially confirmed
that no Health and Hospitals Corp. hospitals or clinics are scheduled to be closed.
Commission Chair Stephen Berger, who was the director of the Emergency Financial
Control Board during the citys brush with bankruptcy in the mid-1970s, described
the HHC hospitals as essential institutions at the news conference.
Hospitals on closing list However,
the commissions report does recommend the closing of nine private hospitals
upstate and five within the metropolitan area as well as mergers of 10 facilities.
The two hospitals in Manhattan targeted by the commission are St. Vincents
Midtown Hospital and Cabrini Medical Center; also on the hit list are Victory
Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn, Westchester Square Medical Center in the Bronx
and Parkway Hospital in Queens. DC 37 will be monitoring the situation
very closely to make sure our public hospitals have adequate resources and personnel
to provide quality health care to the additional patients who may turn to nearby
HHC hospitals and facilities as a result of these closings, said DC 37 Executive
Director Lillian Roberts. Key issue: Medicaid
rates DC 37 has also strongly recommended that the commission immediately
address the issue of low rates of Medicaid reimbursement. While 39 percent of
New York City residents are enrolled in Medicaid, the city only has the capacity
to handle 25 percent of the patients. For any major public health
reform to go forward, an extensive effort to modernize and equalize Medicaid reimbursement
is paramount, the union wrote in a report delivered Dec. 11 at a public
hearing of the Community Health Forum. Under the law that created the
hospital review commission, the state Senate and Assembly both have to reject
the plan in its entirety by Dec. 31 (after this issue of PEP goes to press) or
the recommendations automatically become law; the plan should be carried out by
the end of 2007. | |