Public Employee Press


DC 37 News
Union joins activists to support public hospitals

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

At a series of NYC Health+Hospitals annual meetings in April, May and June, hundreds of union members and residents sent a powerful message: Do more to save public hospitals!

Activists reminded H+H of its mission to provide quality health care regardless of a patient's ability to pay.

As H+H struggles to retain safe staffing levels, Leapfroggroup.com surveys show New York City's public hospitals consistently provide better care than private hospitals. Employees said they work harder and longer with much less support, fewer supplies and dwindling staff due to attrition.

"Working in constant crisis mode only leads to burnout," said Nate Franco, a Local 768 member who spoke at Harlem Hospital's packed forum on June 7.

H+H cares for over 1.4 million patients a year, including over 500,000 undocumented and indigent people.

The dedicated employees at NYC Health+Hospitals stave off life-threatening viral epidemics like Zika, Ebola, West Nile and Legionnaires disease, and respond to national disasters like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Anthrax scare, and Super Storm Sandy.

Members from DC 37 Locals 371, 420, 768, 1189, 1549, health care professionals, community and elected leaders voiced their concerns over the renowned public health system's future.

"We rely heavily on these healthcare institutions," said Local 371 member Linda White, a Senior Hospital Care Investigator at Jacobi Hospital who spoke on April 19. "From the emergency room to the hospital bed, to the clinics, financial uncertainty and changing demographics endanger life as we know it. Change is good but not when it brings downsizing or reductions in services and staff. I am begging the Health and Hosptials board members: Don't forget the least of us, while you make improvements for the rest of us."

DC 37, the Doctors Council and the New York State Nurses Association lobby lawmakers for additional dollars, including helping H+H obtain state and federal matching funds. Barbara Edmonds, DC 37 field services director, said, "We hope that a fair share of the $550 million from the tobacco settlement is directed to Health+Hospitals to assuage the deficit."

NYC H+H, the largest public hospital system in the nation, carries a $1.8 billion debt and competes with private hospitals for Medicaid and other funding. To shore up H+H through 2020, the de Blasio administration allotted $1.8 billion annually. In April, Albany purposed $10 million for Health+Hospitals. Still health-care experts agree more is needed.

And another threat looms large from Washington. The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that could severely reduce access to health care for 23 million Americans. Their proposal would decimate Medicaid, cutting $800 billion over 10 years. These draconian cuts would harm the children, seniors and people with disabilities who depend upon Health+Hospitals as their primary health care provider.

"As we struggle to transition from hospital mode to outpatient clinics-a major hurdle necessary for Health+Hospitals to continue to exist, all stakeholders need to be at the table: labor, management, the community and our elected leaders," Edmonds said.

"We must renew our commitment to health care. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose life was saved at this very hospital, so eloquently said, ‘Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."'