Fortis Deal for LICH Unravelling Due to NYU Langone Medical Center Pullout

By on September 19, 2014 1:16 pm in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Health

The indomitable Mary Frost of the Brooklyn Eagle reports that the deal with Fortis Property Group to purchase the almost completely closed Long Island College Hospital site is in “tatters” due to the NYU Langone Medical Center announcement yesterday that it has pulled out of the deal to offer emergency services and ambulatory care at the LICH.

The withdrawal appears to leave the Fortis Property Group’s proposal to buy LICH in tatters. While the proposal did not include a hospital, Fortis won the bid to buy the Cobble Hill hospital campus substantially on the strength of the medical offerings proposed by NYU.

As reported by Frost, NYU was unwilling to rehire LICH nurses to staff a proposed walk-in emergency department that was a crucial component of SUNY Downstate’s deal with Fortis.

Peter Sikora, a recent candidate for the 52nd Assembly District seat, is following the developments with LICH, in particular the lawsuit filed by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) to ensure that SUNY Downstate stands by its commitment to LICH nurses:

Jo Anne Simon, Sikora’s opponent and the Democratic nominee to replace Joan Millman in the New York State Assembly, also tweeted about the crisis engulfing the Fortis bid:

UPDATE:

Doug Biviano, the third candidate for the 52nd Assembly District, also weighed in on Twitter about the LICH situation:

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  • Doug Biviano

    De Blasio and Cuomo were severely wounded in Primary Election. The message of a full service hospital for an effective ER must be maintained front and center until their corrupt political games collapse like a house of cards.

  • A Neighbor

    Hear hear. Fortis was the #3 bidder. The next highest bidder, Prime, offered a full-service hospital.

  • jeann

    so, instead of getting the first world renowned hospital in Brooklyn (NYU) we have nothing. your all or nothing approach doesn’t work. perhaps this absolutism is partly why you lost the election. NYU doesn’t hate nurses, right? clearly, there is a good reason they didn’t want to cave to all their demands. i think NYU knows a thing or two about the running a hospital. i’ll take their advice over yours and others. there’s a reason so many brooklynites go to manhattan for hospital care. smh.

  • jeann

    they might have offered a lot of things but they couldn’t deliver which is why they were dropped. they had no plan or track record. NYU would have been a major boon for brooklyn, instead, we have nothing b/c of the nurse’s union. detroit next stop.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    NYU wasn’t giving us much more than a 24-hr. urgent care center — if that much. Have a heart attack, stroke or other life-threatening or serious illnesses or injuries and you’d have to go somewhere else.

    We had a full-service hospital with LICH and it was stolen from us, clear and simple.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    You are very easily swayed/fooled by the brand name. You should read about the situation before you make ludicrous comments like that.

  • A Neighbor

    Not sure where to begin. First, Prime was never dropped. They are next in line after Fortis. You probably have them confused with Peebles.

    Second, another urgent care center is not a ‘major boon’ for Brooklyn. That is all NYU was in for.

    Third, the only reason the nurses are in the contract is that SUNY bought them off with a promise of jobs if they would drop their opposition to Fortis. Hard to say both sides didn’t get what they deserved.

    We deserve better.

  • Roberto Gautier

    Mary Frost’s determined and dogged pursuit of the developments chez LICH, Fortis and NYU Langone demonstrate that there still might be a chance for a large part of Brooklyn to have a full-service hospital. Perhaps DeBlasio, Levin, Velazquez, Simon, Squadron and other politicos need to get arrested once again because the case of LICH is still not closed. We need to go beyond Tweets to solve this public health crisis.

  • Heights Observer

    We need a real hospital, not a scaled down ER clinic. The surrounding hospitals in this area of Brooklyn cannot handle the increased patient load. My brother in law, who lives in Park Slope, waited 48 hours in the emergency room of Methodist Hospital recently before he could be admitted to a room. Every doctor and nurse in Methodist admitted that it was because of the closure of LICH.

    In my three decades in Brooklyn Heights I have had to use the ER of LICH four times and had to be admitted twice. I am now in my 61st year of life and chances are that I will need hospital services more now. I am tired of people telling me that everyone living here wants to go to a Manhattan hospital. I have been to hospitals in Manhattan and I am not one of them. My sister was born in LICH in the late 40s. My grandfather died there in 1960 as did my brother died there also in 2010. I want a hospital in the area and do not want to want my life to depend on bridge and tunnel traffic.

    Our grand-standing, idiotic Mayor got himself arrested over the LICH situation during the campaign and then promptly forgot all about it. He even had a surrogate send the community a letter about how wonderful things were going to be in the future. I wish he would devote as much time to LICH as he does to Carriage Horses. He makes me sick!

    I hope and pray that it is not too late to save the hospital and the neighborhood from the greedy billionaire real estate developers and their sleazy political cronies.

  • Doug Biviano

    We must sustain political pressure on de Blasio and Cuomo via every means possible from as many people as possible and push other elected officials and press relentlessly to hound them as well like The Perfect Storm until we get a full service hospital back. If I had won the primary I would be hounding them with the full weight of the Assembly seat behind me. You would have understood how powerful the seat really is. Jo Anne Simon let’s flex some muscle and challenge De Blasio and Cuomo by name if they don’t change their tune. We’re waiting for a press release from your office to jump start and frame the situation on the behalf of the voters. The typical wait and see approach politicians espouse is not good enough with so much at stake.

  • Doug Biviano

    I think it’s time the Brooklyn Heights Blog post an editorial on LICH since this has and will continue to be a life and death matter for the community they serve.

    Staff of BHB what say you?

  • johnny cakes

    Give de Blazzio a Bronx cheer (if) when he comes to the Atlantic Avenue fair next week. Maybe an old tomato upside his fat head would make an impression.

  • bethman14

    You mean like Methodist, Brooklyn Hospital Center, NYU Downtown, any other hospital that’s a 15 minute drive away? The hosptial wasn’t stolen from you….it went bankrupt! I don’t get whats so difficult for people to understand here.

  • bethman14

    Exactly what muscle to you expect the 150th most junior member of the State Assembly to flex? And what exactly should teh state do here? Dump millions of tax dollars into a bankrupt institution because people in Brooklyn’s wealthiest and whitest neighborhood want to be able to have a heart attack within walking distance of Noodle Pooding? I really just don’t get it.

  • bethman14

    Uhm who is the idiot? the Mayor who pulled off a brilliant little bit of political theater of the Democrat primary voters like you he suckered into thinking he could save a bankrupt, state owned hospital?

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    Bethman14 – you haven’t a clue about what you are saying above. Why don’t you stick with something you know about — like figuring out how many condos you you can fit in a blade of grass in Brooklyn Bridge Park?

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    You sure don’t. Are you positive that you’re not really Frank Carone? I’ll say it again, so even an evil, simple-minded, disgusting money-hungry vulture like you can understand. SUNY and NYS wasted all the money and stole from LICH and closed it for their own purposes.

    Now, go to Noodle Pudding and order yourself the greasiest most fattening thing you can find on the menu, take a double-portion bite and talk a lot while you’re chewing. If you choke, have a nice ride to Brooklyn Hospital.

  • Doug Biviano

    If I was Assemblyman and since I would be paid to protect our neighborhood, wherever de Blasio, Cuomo and a camera were present, I’d be there in their face asking them embarrassing questions about LICH until they were forced to pull a 180 on their entirely political decision to close for developers who contributed heavily to their campaigns. They would buckle in no time. Did you see Teachout being ignored at the Labor Day Parade? It’d be that times 100. People don’t understand how fragile these egomaniacs are.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/watch-cuomo-and-de-blasio-ignore-teachout.html

  • bethman14

    Addressing a complex health care finance issue involving multiple competing stakeholders and difficult business decisions by screaming at the mayor during a parade is probably not likely to achieve tangible results. No wonder you only got 700 votes.

  • Doug Biviano

    You have no clue.

  • bethman14

    Our current model of large, capital intensive hospital facilities
    doesn’t work….hence the deep financial trouble faced by practically every major hospital in NYC. Brooklyn already has too many acute care beds (read the Burger Report) at a time when the entire health care industry is focused on reducing the amount of time patients spend in them hospital. The entire model is unsustainable.This hospital has been unprofitable under two different operators and for more than a decade now. It SHOULD have closed YEARS ago if it weren’t for pandering politicians worried that their rich Brooklyn Heights donors wouldn’t fund their campaigns anymore if LICH closed. Now an institution that provides true safety net health care services is financially burdened with this politically loaded albatross. If we have extra millions sitting around (which I doubt) why don’t we spend that improving Kings County Hospital, Coney Island, Wykoff, etc? Building D&TCs in lower income communities like Red Hook and East New York? Creating incentive programs to encourage recent med school grads to practice primary care in under served, minority, low income communities?

    No no lets listen to you dearest Remsen Streeter and pour money into a bankrupt hospital in the whitest, richest part of Brooklyn. Real smart progressive politics there.

  • bethman14

    Really Brooklyn Heights Blog? You don’t censor comments that actually advocate physically assaulting the Mayor?

  • bethman14

    Enliten us…if you were the Mayor, what you would do? Keeping in mind the fact that HHC is nearly bankrupt and has no interest in operating a 12th public hospital and LICH is owned by state agency? And, by the way, is bankrupt and at the mercy of macroeconomic forces far beyond either the Mayor or the Governor’s control? Whats the solution?

    Just scream at people more?

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    Everything you said above is false. It is what the perpetrators of the crime against LICH want you to believe — and you probably know that. Let me ask you — just what do you have against white people, anyway? Some of my best friends are white.

  • bethman14

    Thanks for that persuasive, nuanced, insightful rebuttal of my argument (“everything you said above is false.”). You’re a champion debater.

  • Remsen Street Dweller

    The truth has been printed over and over again in the Brooklyn Eagle and the Red Hook Star Revue. I am in the middle of a work day. I don’t have time to rebut your nonsense right now, bethman14. And, not only are you a greedy land developer — you’re nasty, too.

  • B K

    You were not getting any hospital at all never mind a world renown one. Nyu was taking over operations of the same walk-in urgent care room that SUNY is now operating so SUNY can leave. They weren’t even bringing back ambulances any time soon. There was nothing left of the proposal that won the bid. The whole thing was a scam to get fortis in the winning position. Even the affordable housing piece disappeared. The nurses were not bought off. They didn’t drop opposition to fortis. They accepted a settlement in court, along with all the other litigants including this community’s groups, that had them give up their jobs in exchange for a new rfp & a chance for new hospital biidders. And several highly qualified hospital bidders responded to that new rfp . Nyu is not the only option. In fact the bidder next in line if fortis deal falls thru actually proposes a full service hospital which is something nyu refused to do. So let them walk. You seem a bit confused as to the facts.

  • B K

    Ok M.O. You’re saying that on blog & post about lich. Are you a racist? What difference does it make who lives in lich’s zip code? Lich served many diverse neighborhoods & lower manhattan & was a pediatric surge hospital. Why do you keep telling us about the demographics of the streets around it? When are you going to look past your nose & see how far it’s reach was & how diverse it’s patients were & how much of a lifeline it was for tens of thousands of patients who didn’t live right across the street from it

  • B K

    Wrong. It’s not the model that doesn’t work . It’s the payment system. Hospitals are in this shape because their funding is being cut & cut & cut so more & more can be paid to insurance corporations. Solution: single payer reimbursement, the Berger report is outdated & based on inaccurate assumptions & is no longer valid. The affordable care act instantly made the Berger report obsolete. Hospitals are public service institutions & should not be closed I because they don’t turn a profit. We do not have for-profit hospitals in this state. Hospitals & healthcare are vital services. & should not be big business. So if you’re upset, call your federal & state electeds & tell them so then go vote for the ones who will implement a single payer system.