Brooklyn Heights Blog

The contract dispute previously discussed here between Continuum Health Partners, the consortium that presently controls Long Island College Hospital, and UnitedHealthcare, the parent of the popular Oxford Health Plans as well as other plans covering unions and similar groups, has been resolved.

Crain’s New York Business: The dispute is over: Continuum Health Partners and UnitedHealthcare signed a new contract Wednesday night after months of sometimes tense negotiations. The contract is for all product lines, including commercial, Medicare and Medicaid, and is effective retroactively to March 1.

This means that persons covered under Oxford or other UnitedHealthcare plans may continue to use LICH and LICH-affiliated physicians during the time LICH remains under Continuum’s control and the new contract remains in effect. If and when the merger between LICH and SUNY Downstate Medical Center takes effect–approval by the State Department of Health is still pending–coverage should not be affected, as there is no present dispute between SUNY Downstate and UnitedHealthcare.

March is Women’s History Month, and Keelie Sheridan, the reigning Miss Brooklyn, wants you to know that there are events scheduled here in the Borough to mark the occasion. Specifically, there will be a series of exhibitions, readings and discussions of artwork and writing by Brooklyn based women artists and authors. This will start with a reception, featuring artwork by several illustrators, at the restaurant Superfine, located at 126 Front Street in DUMBO, on Thursday, March 4, from 6-8 p.m. The artwork will be on display from Tuesday, March 2 through Sunday, March 14. Other events in the local area include: a panel discussion featuring several author/illustrators at BookCourt, 163 Court Street, on Sunday, March 14 starting at 11:00 a.m.; and a group story time, featuring the same group of author/illustrators, at P.S. Bookshop, 147A Front Street, DUMBO, on Sunday, March 21, from 4-6 p.m. For more details, see Miss Brooklyn’s website.

Andy Campbell of The Brooklyn Paper this week interviewed representatives of three Brooklyn hospitals, including Long Island College Hospital along with Maimonides Medical Center and Methodist Hospital. Asked what LICH was doing to stand out among other hospitals, interim president Dominick Stanzione said:

It’s important that LICH remain a full-service hospital, serving the community. The merger [a pending one with SUNY Downstate] provides an opportunity to expand that service, rather than consolidate it. Even before that happens, we’re in the process of adding additional services.

Stanzione also described the healthcare system as “broken”, and said it “needs to be fixed”, but thinks the plan currently proposed “would not be particularly helpful to New York.”

Nurses at Long Island College Hospital today marched with placards to protest management’s attempt to modify their union contract.

The Brooklyn Paper: Nurses at Long Island College Hospital took to the street in front of the Cobble Hill medical center on Wednesday, alleging that the financially flatlining institution is tinkering with their contracts as it braces for new ownership.

The sticking point is a job security clause that management wants to eliminate, allegedly because of a demand by LICH’s prospective merger partner, SUNY Downstate Medical Center.

Norval White and Fran Leadon - NY Times

When Norval White, who passed away in December, was working on the latest edition of his AIA Guide to New York, he knew it was going to be the last one with which he was involved. With both the future in mind and needing assistance–in his eighties, his mobility wasn’t what it was–he enlisted the help of City College assistant professor Fran Leadon in completing the edition.

Leadon, who lives in Cobble Hill, was referred to White by another CCNY professor, who knew both. White had founded the architecture department at City College and taught there for more than twenty-five years, before retiring and moving from Pierrepont Street to France, with a stop in Connecticut.

Even with White back in France, Leadon, with a legion of his own students, was able to carry out the leg-work that allowed the fifth edition of the “go-to” guide of NYC architecture to get completed.

An article in the Times back in the spring mentioned that Leadon was also a musician, which is how I knew him – as a singer for the Brooklyn bluegrass band, the Y’all Stars. Last week,I contacted Mr. Leadon to ask how the book was going, and when the next Y’All Star gig was. Though in the Times he was self-effacing about his avocation, he is an accomplished musician, and grew up in Florida, listening to bluegrass, folk, country and honky-tonk.

Read more »

As we noted here last July, discussions have been underway concerning a transfer of management of Long Island College Hospital from Continuum Health Partners to SUNY Downstate Medical Center. This now appears closer to fruition.

The Brooklyn Paper: Long Island College Hospital’s financial malaise is about to run its course, thanks to an agreement that would merge it with another healthcare center, officials say.

LICH’s current operator, Continuum Health Partners, approved an agreement on Wednesday that would merge the Cobble Hill hospital with SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Crown Heights — effectively easing LICH’s fiscal woes and its tumultuous relationship with Continuum.

The agreement, under which SUNY Downstate would operate LICH as a second campus in addition to its present one in Crown Heights, must still receive approval from the New York State Department of Health. Should LICH leave Continuum, and presuming there is no dispute over insurance coverage between SUNY Downstate and UnitedHealthcare, the completion of this merger should mean that those covered under UnitedHealthcare’s medical insurance plans, which include Oxford, will still be able to use LICH.

The contract dispute between UnitedHealthcare, the health insurance giant that controls the popular Oxford Health Plans, and Continuum Health Partners, the hospital consortium that controls Long Island College Hospital, is the subject of a front page article in today’s Times:

The New York Times: A front in the national health care battle has opened in New York City, where a major hospital chain and one of the nation’s largest insurance companies are locked in a struggle over control of treatment and costs that could have broad ramifications for millions of people with private health insurance.

The fight is between Continuum Health Partners, a consortium of five New York hospitals, including Beth Israel Medical Center and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, both major teaching hospitals, and UnitedHealthcare, which includes Oxford health plans and has 25 million members across the country, one million of them in New York.

Principal sticking points in the dispute are Continuum’s demands for increased payments, and United’s insistence that hospitals notify insurers within 24 hours of any patient admission or face a penalty of having reimbursement for that patient’s treatment cut in half.

As reported by NY1, a state court today issued an order temporarily restraining UnitedHealthcare, a major health insurance group that controls the popular Oxford Health Plans, from terminating coverage for services provided by doctors affiliated with hospitals in the Continuum Health Partners consortium, which includes Long Island College Hospital. As we previously reported, Continuum’s contract with UnitedHealthcare expired because the parties could not agree on terms of a new contract by the January 1 deadline. Under state law, the insurer was required to provide coverage during a two month grace period following the contract expiration, which meant that, if the parties were still not able to agree on new terms, coverage would have ended March 1. The court has now ordered UnitedHealthcare to continue providing coverage beyond that date, pending arbitration of the dispute.

Norval White, architect, author, and long time Heights resident, died at his home in Roques, France on December 26, at the age of 83. As Henrik Krogius noted in the Brooklyn Eagle:

His own Brooklyn Heights brownstone served him with examples of noteworthy architectural elements. Norval C. White, co-author of the important AIA Guide to New York City, celebrated many Heights buildings in that work, as well as in his more personal “bouillabaisse of a book,” The Architecture Book (1977), about which Paul Goldberger wrote that “it has a breezy irreverence that seems especially correct as a basis for an architectural viewpoint today.”

Krogius also points out that, in his writing, White used details from his own brownstone at 104 Pierrepont Street to illustrate architectural concepts. Read more »

Visiting Brooklyn proved a bit more exciting than planned for a British teen and his dad (shown above with Dr. Caitlin Jones of Long Island College Hospital), who were forced to extend their holiday stay here when the lad developed an abscess the size of a golf ball in his throat, and was taken to LICH for emergency surgery. After the ordeal, the homesick pair were treated to dinner by the Atlantic Chip Shop. In LICH’s words:

Keaton Bishop, a 17-year old British teen “on holiday” with his family, expected to do the things all first-time visitors to New York do - sightsee, shop and take in a Broadway show or two. Instead of returning to college and his South Yorkshire home before Christmas, however, Keaton and his dad, Paul, experienced something else entirely: Brooklyn emergency medical care – and hospitality. Read more »