SUNY Downstate: How it Feels to be Flat out Lied to and Treated like a Fool or What To Do about the SUNY Downstate Board of Trustees

As a resident of Brooklyn Heights for the past seventeen years I have used the services of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) as a patient many times.   

Over the past several months, in addition to keeping informed about the State University of New York’s (SUNY) Board of Trustees’ call for closure of the hospital, I have been an active supporter of LICH in its struggle to keep its doors open. 

Two weeks ago, I watched (via YouTube) the June 4th public hearing of the NYS Senate Standing Committee on Higher Education, which focused on the proposed sustainability plan for the Downstate Hospital MedicalCenter presented by the Board of Trustees of SUNY. I watched the entire hearing from start to finish – listening to the SUNY presentation, various panels, including state senators, reacting to – some supportive of and some questioning the viability of the plan, as well as the responses of LICH nurses and other staff.

The proposed sustainability plan as presented on June 4th consists of a SUNY network with various other Brooklyn hospitals (minus LICH) in order to negotiate for better rates from insurance companies, as well asMedicare and Medicaid.  

SUNY trustees, though vague about many of the details of the proposed network, pointed out the necessity for the creation of another body above SUNY to manage the network. Another governing  layer seems to me not only an unnecessary and expensive complication, but it also does nothing to address the core problems.  One of the panelists even said there is no current model like this at all.

Moreover, still another panelist pointed out that the linchpin to the SUNY proposal, i.e. the network of hospitals, may be totally irrelevant anyway as SUNY already has that ability to bargain with other hospitals.  

It seems to me that the real problem here is the SUNY Board of Trustees.  They have a history, documented in the NY Times, the Daily News and other publications of having mismanaged SUNY Downstate hospitals for years.  The NYS Comptroller’s Audit spoke of SUNY’s “weak governance and ineffectual financial management.”  The Comptroller’s previous audit in 2012 also found that “Downstate had poor procurement practices that led to fraudulent and uneconomical vendor selection, inefficient implementation of a multimillion dollar software system, and conflicts of interests between an employee and a vendor. These deficiencies likely contributed to  the financial distress at the Hospital.”

The Comptroller’s report also stated that SUNY Downstate paid $3.1 million to Pitts Management Associates to find ways to cut costs, but they did nothing to implement any of the recommendations! 

Besides providing incompetent management of Downstate hospitals, the SUNY Board of Trustees has behaved despicably to the citizens of Brooklyn in their dealing with LICH.  From the very beginning, with the takeover of LICH in 2011, SUNY did nothing to bolster the viability of LICH. What it did do is keep an expensive and inefficient billing system left over from Continuum Healthcare, as well as close the lauded LICH School of Nursing, etc.

And just as the SUNY Trustees work to close LICH leaving that area of Brooklyn without a hospital, it has been reported that Downstate has been planning to open a new hospital in an area already dense with hospitals. 

Actually, before all of the above transpired, the Brooklyn Heights Association (BHA) had presented SUNY Downstate with a community award for saving LICH. How taken in was the BHA – how taken in were we all!

And, recently when the NY City Council voted unanimously to support LICH in its struggle to keep its doors open as a full-service hospital serving Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, the SUNY Trustees put on a phony show of rescinding the closure plans.  

Meanwhile, they have done everything possible to “starve out” LICH by no longer sending residents to the hospital, withholding needed supplies, removing equipment, not involving any LICH stakeholders with its so-called meetings with other hospitals in the interest of a possible merger with LICH etc., etc.

I could go on and on listing the affronts of the SUNY Board of Trustees – how they disregard the NYS judge’s restraining order regarding LICH, etc. etc.  All these heinous activities are documented in various daily and local newspapers, community board blogs, etc.

The point is – what kind of representatives are these people – the so-called SUNY Board of Trustees? What do they know about running a hospital?  What do they know about conducting their business in an honorable, open way that respects Brooklyn and NYC residents, rather than deliberately putting NYC residents in harm’s way?  

I believe that to truly provide long-term sustainability for SUNY Downstate and LICH, the leadership of and/or the SUNY Board of Trustees needs to be censured or removed.  They are the real problem here – not the solution.