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NYC and state lawmakers urge Gov. Hochul to sign bill boosting community input on hospital closures
By
Caroline Lewis
Published Oct 30, 2024
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Susan Watts/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul
By
Caroline Lewis
Published Oct 30, 2024
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Members of the New York City Council and state lawmakers are pressuring Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign legislation boosting community input on proposed hospital closures.
The Local Input for Community Hospitals, or LICH, Act passed both houses of the state Legislature in June but is still awaiting the governor's approval.
City councilmembers have introduced a resolution calling on Hochul to sign the bill, and state lawmakers who sponsored the legislation testified on its importance at a Council hearing on Tuesday on the local impact of hospital closures.
Hochul is still reviewing the legislation, said Sam Spokony, a spokesperson for Hochul.
The LICH Act is named after a Brooklyn hospital that closed in 2014 following intense community opposition. The bill gained momentum this year with two other contentious hospital closures on the table: those of Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Downtown Manhattan and SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. Both hospitals are still operating, but their futures remain uncertain.
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and is running for New York City mayor, testified at the hearing that the public outreach process around the proposal to close SUNY Downstate earlier this year was “rushed, opaque and wholly insufficient.” The outreach process included invitation-only focus groups that were held after Hochul and SUNY officials publicly announced a plan to close the hospital and replace it with an outpatient clinic.
“It was frankly an insult to my community, and I am proud that we mobilized to fight back against this plan,” Myrie said.
Hochul ultimately agreed to create a task force on the future of SUNY Downstate, which has until April 2025 to issue its recommendations.
If signed into law, the LICH Act would require the state health commissioner to hold a public community forum on a planned hospital closure at least 150 days before it was set to take place. The legislation would also require hospital operators to submit detailed assessments of how a closure would impact health equity in the surrounding area and what the operators would do to ameliorate any negative effects. Similar assessments are already required for certain types of hospital service cuts but not for full closures.
Councilmembers on Tuesday grilled city health officials on their role in local hospital closures. The officials said they have little input since the state health department decides whether or not to approve closures.
Dr. Michelle Morse, the city’s acting health commissioner, said the city is sometimes consulted on the potential health equity impact of a hospital cutting beds or other services because of the assessments that are required for those changes. She said the same process does not occur for closures and the city is generally not consulted.
Still, city officials said they are preparing for the possibility they will have to scale up services at public hospitals located near those that are at risk of closing — specifically, Bellevue in Manhattan and Kings County in Brooklyn.
Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse of Brooklyn said those preparations should take place much earlier in the process of considering a potential hospital closure.
Tagged
Health and Science
hospital closing
new york city
Kathy Hochul
Politics
Caroline Lewis
Caroline Lewis is on the health care beat for WNYC and Gothamist. She has covered COVID, a nurses' strike, the overdose crisis and New York’s marijuana legalization effort, and spent a year investigating patients' medical bills. She always wants to hear about how everyday New Yorkers experience the health system. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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