The Brooklyn Eagle reports on the appearance of Debra Carey, the interim CEO of LICH*, at the recent 84th Precinct Community Council meeting at St. Francis College. Carey says the hospital’s new management is committed to staying and growing the hospital, not closing it the case had been under its previous owner Continuum.
Brooklyn Eagle: Emphasizing that SUNY Downstate, with its three Brooklyn campuses (LICH, Bay Ridge and the main campus in East Flatbush), is totally focused on the borough, she said that the organization’s goal is to make LICH a “tertiary” hospital.
This means a major, full-service hospital, one from which patients don’t need to be referred to another hospital to see specialists or to have operations. To shore up some of the departments, she said, SUNY Downstate is bringing over staff from its Flatbush campus.
One challenge LICH faces, she said, is that some people aren’t aware that LICH still offers maternity or pediatric care — they assume that those departments closed. (Continuum had threatened to close them, but the state ordered that they be kept open.)
She stressed that Downstate has no plans to sell any of the hospital’s buildings, and added that all of LICH’s physicians have been named faculty at SUNY Downstate’s medical school. She reminded audience members that the medical school itself was located at LICH until the early 1950s — thus, the slogan, “Together Again.”
*SUNY Downstate Medical Center University Hospital of Brooklyn at Long Island College Hospital, which the Eagle reports will be changed to a snappier name soon. However, they say the name will always include “Long Island College Hospital”.
