Downtown Hospital Needs Lifeline ; Calls to Action on Single Payer and Fracking

From the Demand A Hospital (St. Vincent's activists) e-mail list : 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Demand A Hospital <demandahospital@gmail.com>

Subject: NEWS ALERT : Downtown Hospital on brink of collapse ; plus, CALLS TO ACTION on Healthcare and Fracking

Date: 28 janvier 2013 21:00:18 UTC-05:00

To: Demand A Hospital <demandahospital@gmail.com>

Reply-To: demandahospital@gmail.com

Dear All :

NEWS ALERT.  From our friend, Barbara Ruether, that Downtown Hospital has been on the verge of financial collapse and will be acquired by New York-Presbyterian.

This article points out how Downtown Hospital had to double the beds in the neonatal intensive care unit in 2010, which was when St. Vincent's Hospital was closed.  Downtown Hospital could not afford the expansion of maternity care, but the State Department of Health gave Downtown Hospital no extra support in the face of the closing of St. Vincent's.  In contrast, Medicaid reimbursement rates were cut by Gov. Cuomo.  It is almost three years since St. Vincent's closed, and we are still dealing with the severe effects to public health.  And the State Department of Health still has no plan to equally fund all of our hospitals and medical centers, so that each hospital can fully meet the needs of all patients.  

Link : http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130127/HEALTH_CARE/301279973

NY-Presbyterian to bail out Downtown Hospital

Lower Manhattan's last medical center on brink of collapse.

 

By Barbara Benson @Barbara_Benson

January 27, 2013 5:59 a.m.

The last remaining hospital in lower Manhattan, financially unstable after years of operating losses, is being bailed out by a wealthy uptown white knight, Crain's New York Business has learned.

New York-Presbyterian Hospital has asked state health officials for permission to acquire New York Downtown Hospital, the only institution below 14th Street since St. Vincent's Hospital closed in 2010. Downtown "has experienced persistent, significant financial difficulties that threaten its future viability," New York-Presbyterian officials wrote in December in a request to the New York State Department of Health. '[Downtown Hospital] is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, unless the current situation is changed."

Downtown will become the sixth campus of New York-Presbyterian. Currently a 180-bed community hospital, Downtown may look very different as a campus of an uptown owner, although it was not clear late last week what plans the huge health system has for Downtown. "[The facility will] transition into a sustainable and financially feasible model of care," according to New York-Presbyterian's application to the state.

The proposed deal seems similar to the transaction struck last week between Montefiore Medical Center and New York Westchester Square, a bankrupt Bronx community hospital. Both Montefiore and New York-Presbyterian are buying financially troubled community hospitals. Under Montefiore's ownership, Westchester Square will cease being a hospital and will have only emergency, surgical and primary care services.

Unlike its Bronx counterpart, Downtown will stay a hospital, simply because lower Manhattan can't do without one. Manhattan overall has 6.3 hospital beds per 1,000 residents. Lower Manhattan has a paltry 0.57. New York-Presbyterian executives believe they can save Downtown by improving the "quality, delivery and efficiency of the existing services."

"Our plan is for Downtown to remain a community hospital," said a New York-Presbyterian spokeswoman, declining to elaborate further. Jeffrey Menkes, Downtown's president and chief executive, declined to comment.

Downtown has been in the New York-Presbyterian health system's sprawling network since 2006 but is a separate corporate entity. Downtown has struggled for years, even selling off a parking lot to developer Bruce Ratner in 2004 to raise cash.

New York-Presbyterian, meanwhile, is a behemoth with nearly $4 billion in revenue. It employs some 20,000 workers, including 6,000 doctors, and has nearly 2,300 beds.

Heavily reliant on Medicaid

The uptown health system expects to be able to absorb Downtown's losses and assume all its outstanding debt. Under new ownership, Downtown would become a "financially viable division of NYP Hospital," according to the state filing.

New York-Presbyterian blames Downtown's financial collapse on federal and state reimbursement cuts and the hospital's inability to either boost revenue or reduce costs. Downtown is heavily reliant on revenue from Medicaid, the government program for low-income and disabled people, which covers 45% of the patients it discharges. Among patients treated in the emergency department, 20% are uninsured.

Downtown also has been forced into the red by maternity care. Between 2002 and 2011, the number of obstetric patient days grew about 3.3% a year, prompting the hospital to convert eight regular beds to maternity beds, for a total of 24. That move followed a doubling of beds in 2010 in the neonatal intensive care unit. Now the neonatal IC and maternity units lose more than $1 million a year, thanks to high staffing and operating costs, pricey medical malpractice insurance and low reimbursement rates.

Despite that shaky financial foundation, Downtown is the only hospital serving the 314,273 New Yorkers who live below Houston Street—not to mention the daily surge of 750,000 people who work in the area. And once the September 11 Memorial and 1 World Trade Center come online, those numbers will spike even more.

Downtown evacuated before Superstorm Sandy hit, based on the assumption that lower Manhattan would lose electrical power. It suffered no damage beyond the loss of revenue for about a week. And a good thing, too: In early January, more than 20 passengers from a ferry crash in lower Manhattan were treated at Downtown.

A version of this article appears in the January 28, 2013, print issue of Crain's New York Business as "NY-Presby to bail out Downtown Hospital".

CALL TO ACTION / HEALTHCARE.  Please contact the new State Senator Brad Hoylman.  He has been assigned to the Investigations and Government Operations Committee, which is charged with investigating the state's infrastructure collapse in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  Please contact Sen. Hoylman with your concerns about the lack of adequate full-service hospital care in New York City : 

http://www.nysenate.gov/senator/brad-hoylman

District Office

322 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1700

New York, NY 10001

United States

Phone: (212) 633-8052

Fax: (212) 633-8096

Albany Office

Room 413, Legislative Office Building

Albany, NY 12247

United States

Phone: (518) 455-2451

Fax: (518) 426-6846

Here is information to read before you contact State Sen. Hoylman :  please make a plug for the single payer bill that is being discussed and reviewed by the state legislature.  

Link :  http://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/january/single-payer-system-is-only-way-to-keep-health-costs-down

CALL TO ACTION / FRACKING.  From our friends Barbara Ruether and Carol Yost come word about this invitation from CREDO Action :  Everybody is being asked to show up to an anti-fracking demonstration outside Gov. Cuomo's Manhattan offices : 

Governor Cuomo has until February 13 to decide whether he will lift New York's fracking moratorium.1 If he doesn't lift it, he will have to announce another major procedural delay.

That gives us less than a month to put overwhelming pressure on Governor Cuomo to maintain the current moratorium on fracking. Our friends at New Yorkers Against Fracking are organizing a rally at the governor's office in New York City to tell him to ban fracking forever. Will you join them?

What : Rally to ban fracking at Governor Cuomo's NYC office 

When : Friday, February 8, at noon 

Where : Governor Cuomo's office, 633 Third Avenue, Manhattan (between East 40th and 41st streets) 

Thank you for all that you do.

moneyoutofpolitics mic check grand central station march to pfizer

After government integrity and healthcare activists held a mic check and balloon release inside Grand Central Station, the activists marched to Pfizer headquarters, where they did a speak-out and mocked the Pfizer marketing gimmick called, "Get Old."

Divestment From Corrupt Private Health Insurance Industry

Health Care Workers, Patients Lead Fight for Divestment from Corrupt Private Health Insurance Industry : Presbyterian Church and TIAA-CREF Hear Their Call

By Katie Robbins

In the midst of a fierce debate on the national level around the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act, the Divestment Campaign for Health Care made its official debut. Its stated mission: “to expose how the health insurance industry puts the need for profit above the needs of patients and to escalate public support for total removal of the private health insurance companies from our nation’s health care.”

Leading advocacy organizations dedicated to single-payer health care are committed to pursuing a divestment campaign from private health insurance companies in order to transform the treatment of health care as a commodity into a basic human right for all people in the U.S.

“We are responsible for our investments, and particularly as health care workers and patients, we see the immorality of the private health insurance companies as they deny payment for care in order to create huge profits for shareholders. Those who stand for a just and equitable health care system must recognize the corrupting force of the private health insurance industry on our political process that costs tens of thousands of lives every year in addition to being a huge financial drain,” states Dr. Rob Stone, M.D.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) became the first major institution to take steps towards divestment from private health insurance. On July 7th, the church’s national assembly unanimously passed a resolution stating they will “evaluate the variance between church principles of universal access and affordability on the one hand and corporate objectives on the other. It will also assess the likelihood of significant change in corporate behavior.”

The resolution passed after moving testimony was delivered by Rev. Dr. Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos, the widow of the original author of the resolution, Rev. A. David Bos who passed away from a sudden case of pneumonia last year, stating before the committee:

“As he lay in the hospital, struggling with the oxygen mask provided to give his lungs the air they needed, he spoke haltingly what would be his last words on this earth: ‘How much will this cost?’ He died six days later. Three weeks after his death a representative from our health insurance company informed me in a telephone call that they rejected the claim to pay for my husband’s hospitalization and medical costs because of a ‘pre-existing condition.’”

Rev. Dr. van Wijk-Bos felt confident the work they had done would lead to full exposure of these corrupt companies because “corporate interests are incompatible with patient care.”

On the heels of this successful endorsement from the Presbyterian Church, activists gathered inside and outside the pension fund giant TIAA-CREF’s shareholder meeting in New York City to call attention to their holdings in private health insurance. Members of TIAA-CREF were shocked to learn that private health insurance companies are considered part of their socially responsible investment portfolio.

Sandy Fox, psychiatric social worker from Pittsburgh, PA, received applause from the other attendees when she asked President and CEO Roger Ferguson, Jr. about these holdings:

“How do you justify including health insurance companies–CIGNA, Humana, Aetna, Coventry, and WellPoint– in CREF-Social Choice? Private health insurance companies add enormous cost but no value to health care. Furthermore, these companies violate 3 of the 5 social criteria for inclusion in the fund including:

1) NOT “devoted to human rights;”

2) NOT “dedicated to producing high-quality and safe products;” and

3) NOT “managed in an exemplary and ethical manner.”

...We come to you today to demand that you immediately divest from these ruthless companies.”

Shortly before the meeting, the Campaign launched a petition to TIAA-CREF calling for them to move their money out of private health insurance receiving nearly 2000 signers in just a few days.

The Divestment Campaign for Health Care calls upon all people of conscience to shed light on the duplicitous practices that continue in the private health insurance industry. As the Campaign’s mission statement says “We have nothing to lose. Health insurance companies have everything to lose as their stock prices drop and their influence wanes. Go to your religious organization, your union, your pension plan, your 401k advisor, your university endowment, your city council, your friends and neighbors, and tell them it’s time to get the health insurers out!”

Originally posted at : Healthcare Not Wealthcare

Dr. Daniel Lugassy At A SCOTUS ACA Reaction Rally Outside St. Vincent's Hospital

Dr. Daniel Lugassy participates in a speak-out at a rally for a single-payer healthcare system outside of the closed St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City. The Affordable Care Act will not end the financial crisis that can devastate patients, should they cannot afford to pay for their healthcare. CNN reported that medical bills lead to more than 60% of bankruptcy filings in the U.S.

Source : http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-05/health/bankruptcy.medical.bills_1_medical-bills-bankruptcies-health-insurance

Doctors For The 99 Percent Illuminate NYC Area Hospitals

A group called Doctors For The 99% used a large projection device to illuminate messages about healthcare injustice on 3 major NYC hospitals : Columbia University Medical Center on West 168th Street in Manhattan, at Montefiore Medical Center on East 210 Street in the Bronx, and at NYU Langone Medical Center on First Avenue in Manhattan.

Join our coalition of physician activists in support of Occupy. Like us on facebook https://www.facebook.com/doctorsforthe99 and visit us at www.doctorsforthe99.org.

Single Payer Healthcare Lobby Day

Register to attend the Physicians for a National Health Program Albany Lobby Day : Tuesday, May 8, 2012.

Private health insurance is eating us alive. We need single payer in New York State.

Assemblyman Dick Gottfried and State Senator Tom Duane are introducing a new-and-improved single payer bill. Join doctors, nurses and patients across the state in advocating for a truly universal and affordable health care system for New York !