Update: the Eagle now reports that three more groups that would operate a full service ospital at LICH have expressed interest and believe LICH is “sconomically viable.” These groups must submit proposals by this Wednesday, March 19 if they are to be considered.
SUNY has given thirty day layoff notices to 600 Long island College Hospital employees, according to New York Business Journal.
While [Mayor Bill] de Blasio and a coalition of neighbors and union members successfully forced a new round of bidding in a legal settlement, the deal freed SUNY from an earlier prohibition on cutting staff and services while the lawsuits were active. Now, hospital management is “aligning staff levels with patient volume and currently available services,” said spokesman David Doyle.
Meanwhile, local residents at a meeting in Red Hook were not pleased by the presentation of Dr. Richard B. Becker, of Brooklyn Hospital which, along with the real estate developer Related Group and Blue Wolf Capital, is bidding to take over the LICH campus, close the hospital, provide minimal medical facilities, and turn the rest into residential use. The Eagle quotes Dr. Becker, when pressed on what exactly Brooklyn Hospital proposes to provide, as implying that if local residents behaved better, the issue would become irrelevant.
“Let me take a step back,” he said. “The data show that when people take their medicine, understand how to live a healthy lifestyle, modify their diets, their health care outcomes improve so they don’t need to live so close to a full service hospital.”
At least one bidder has proposed a full service hospital. According to The Eagle:
A bidding group made up of the Chinese Community Accountable Care Organization (CCACO), partnering with the Eastern Chinese American Physician IPA, developer John Catsimatidis and Rudy Washington proposed a full service hospital in the first rounds of bidding and have told the Eagle that they intend to participate in this latest round.
The article quotes Jim Walden, of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the attorney representing community groups in the fight to save LICH, as saying “the community needs love, not pillow talk,” and that the successful “suitor will be the proposer who delivers it.”
