The State of New York commissioned a group to look at the state’s bloated healthcare industry and to make recommendations as to the best means to trim healthcare costs.
The Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, also known as the Berger Commission, is releasing their findings today. Among the recommendations will be suggested closures of hospitals because the state has too many hospital beds in relation to those needed.
Today’s Times-Union is carrying a story about the Commission’s recommendations for Schenectady area healthcare facilities. An excerpt from Report calls for Bellevue’s closure: It also recommends a unified administration for two Schenectady hospitals in order to trim expenses follows:
ALBANY — Bellevue Woman’s Hospital must close and the two remaining hospitals in Schenectady should face state sanctions if they don’t merge their bureaucracies, according to a plan to rid waste from New York’s health care system.
The comprehensive report slated to be unveiled today by the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century will call for nine hospitals around the state to close outright, and others to disappear through mergers.
Numerous nursing homes will also be shuttered or merged, including five in the Capital Region, according to people familiar with the report.
The consolidations are necessary for the state to trim excess health care beds and save taxpayers hundreds of millions in Medicaid expenses.
In the Capital Region, the commission found an overcapacity of health care services in Schenectady. It calls for closing Bellevue, which is celebrating its 75th year, sources briefed on the plan said Monday.
The commission also requires Ellis Hospital, now with 368 beds, and St. Clare’s Hospital, with 200 beds, to unite under a single governing structure. The recommendation would bring together a Catholic institution with family planning constraints, and a non-Catholic facility that provides abortions.
If the new governing board is not created by the end of 2007, the state could close one of the facilities entirely. The report will specify that the state health commissioner can expand or close Ellis or St. Clare’s and downsize up to 250 beds.
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St. Clare’s and Ellis officials have declined comment on the plan.
The reality of New York’s system is that the state really controls the operations of a hospital through the Certificate of Need process. Want to add a bed, you need permission. Want to remove a bed, you need permission. Want to operate; you have to dip into public funds for everything from construction to day-to-day operations. You’re a Catholic institution and you think you have some say – nope.
Hospitals in New York are largely government funded (The Dormitory Authority issues construction/renovation bonds, Medicare and Medicaid cover 50% of hospital revenues, there are direct subsidies and grants). For more information see Dispelling the Myths – New York’s Hospital Finances: Another View (PDF document) by the Health Plan Association.
It will be interesting to note whether the Commission covered other options – things I would like to see such as:
- Cutting Medicaid benefits to basic healthcare needs only (hospitalization, infant and child well-care) and removing the grotesque add-ons such as coverage for family planning and abortions as well as coverage for selective services/procedures;
- Cutting off union demands for increased hospital funding and worker wage increases as demanded by the SEIU.
Above all this, the reaction from Catholic institutions should be very interesting. Will they be able to face down the juggernaut of government imposed mandates and consolidations? Will they simply acquiesce, and commingle their operations with hospitals that provide abortions, the ‘morning after’ abortion pill, sterilizations, and other family planning initiatives?
These questions will need serious consideration and a serious response in Schenectady and across New York. In other areas of New York the Catholic hospital may be the last one standing. Will they then be ‘required’ to offer abortions, sterilizations, and other options antithetical to Catholic teaching? Will the purse strings control the Catholic response?
Stay tuned.