Wyckoff wants to join North Shore-LIJ system

From the Queens Courier:

America’s health care industry is changing, and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on the Ridgewood/Bushwick border is looking to partner with a regional health care giant to expand and enhance its services.

According to Wyckoff Heights CEO Ramon Rodriguez, the hospital is in discussions with the North Shore/LIJ Health System regarding an affiliation agreement designed to retain Wyckoff’s independence while also providing additional health care options and “support for quality of care and clinical decisions.”


Serving tens of thousands of patients annually from both sides of the Brooklyn/Queens border, Rodriguez said, the hospital needs to transform its services to keep up with the national health care trend that has seen the rise of urgent care centers and outpatient/ambulatory services along with a reduction in extended hospital stays.

To that end, the board recently authorized Rodriguez to seek out affiliations with larger medical organizations in the New York City area. In responding to a request for proposals, he noted, North Shore/LIJ offered what the board considered to be the best options for Wyckoff Heights.

Obama as hospital savior? Maybe not

From the Daily News:

In a move expected to save three struggling Brooklyn hospitals, the Obama administration has finally agreed to let the state reinvest $8 billion in Medicaid savings into its health care system, Gov. Cuomo said Thursday.

Cuomo has repeatedly warned that without the approval, Brookdale Hospital, Interfaith Medical Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center would soon shut down.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Cuomo Thursday that the feds are ready to sign off on the request.

The $8 billion is $2 billion less than the state had sought, but it’s enough to help remake the health care system, Cuomo said.

However Crains has this to say:

Disregard the political rhetoric prior to this week's tentative approval by federal health officials of an $8 billion grant to overhaul New York state's health care system.

The so-called Medicaid waiver is not going to prevent every struggling Brooklyn hospital from closing, let alone any specific hospital. It won't keep New York City's public health system in the black.

And the waiver has nothing to do with New York's insurance exchange created under Obamacare, a connection that Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly made as he pushed Washington to approve the cash infusion he had sought for 19 months.

For the average New Yorker, the $8 billion grant will actually chip away at the beloved hospitals so many community groups have battled to protect in recent years. The blunt reality of the new federal funding is that community hospitals throughout the city will lose beds. Many will be a sliver of their former selves, and newly anchored to big health care delivery systems. Access to more complex medical services will require travel to another neighborhood—or another borough.

In truth, what the $8 billion in federal money will fund can't be explained in a soundbite. That is because most of it will be funneled through the complex federal Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program, or DSRIP, embedded in similar waivers that Washington approved for New Jersey, California and Texas. The program is meant to stabilize the health care safety-net system and to cut avoidable hospitalizations and emergency-department use by 25% over the next five years.

Tweeding involved in Wyckoff mess

From the NY Times:

In recent years, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn has often gone hat in hand to the city and state, lamenting cuts in government assistance and questioning whether officials truly understood the burden of running a nonprofit hospital in Bushwick, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

For much of that time, Wyckoff’s chief executive was driving to work in a Bentley Continental GT, a $160,000 automobile, and at one point, the hospital paid thousands of dollars to insure the vehicle, according to hospital records and interviews. When the chief executive lost his license after an accident, hospital security guards chauffeured him and his wife around the clock in a Cadillac Escalade or a Lincoln Town Car.

The chief executive, Rajiv Garg, was not the only one who benefited from his ties with Wyckoff. One member of the hospital’s board obtained for the pharmacy that he owned the exclusive right to market prescription drugs to hospital patients. Another board member lent $2.4 million to the ailing Wyckoff at 12 percent interest, with the hospital required to put up several of its buildings as security.

Local politicians also joined in. Allies of United States Representative Edolphus Towns, Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez and Councilman Erik Martin Dilan have landed high-level positions at the hospital, despite questionable qualifications, further weakening its management. Mr. Dilan’s wife became the hospital’s director of public relations.

Many hospitals in downtrodden areas of New York City and across the state are faltering, raising concerns that a wave of closings will deprive poor people of badly needed care.

A three-month investigation by The New York Times into Wyckoff, based on dozens of interviews and an examination of internal documents, offers a sobering portrait of how one such hospital has been undermined by the very people entrusted to run it.

Wyckoff Hospital under investigation

From the NY Times:

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has been looking into management practices at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, a money-losing hospital serving mostly poor patients, several hospital trustees said Wednesday.

The investigation, which has been going on for several months, is focused on the relationship between hospital officials and a Caribbean medical school in which the officials had a financial stake, the trustees said.

It has also been looking at whether Rajiv Garg, the hospital’s chief executive until he was abruptly replaced early last week, had been improperly reimbursed by the hospital for expenses that included a first-class plane ticket to London and a holiday party that he hosted with his wife at the Lambs Club, a fashionable restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, the trustees said.

Several trustees said the district attorney’s office had subpoenaed records, including payroll documents and contracts, and had invited various hospital officials into the to talk. But it was unclear Wednesday whether any criminal behavior was suspected, or whether officials had broken hospital rules. A spokesman for Charles J. Hynes, the district attorney, declined to comment.

How long before Wyckoff folds?

From the NY Times:

The chief executive of a troubled Brooklyn hospital has been abruptly dismissed, less than a month after a task force set up by the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo outlined a plan to carry out a major reorganization of how hospital care is delivered in Brooklyn.

A state task force had recommended that Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn be merged with two hospitals.

Soon after the dismissal of the chief executive, Rajiv Garg, a member of the governor’s task force took over day-to-day control of the hospital, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. The task force had recommended that Wyckoff be merged with two other hospitals.

The new chief, Ramon Jesus Rodriguez, confirmed Thursday that he had been appointed over the Christmas weekend by the Wyckoff board of trustees. He said that the appointment was unanimous and that he had taken over on Tuesday.

The appointment raised eyebrows among some hospital advocates and public officials because it happened so swiftly, without public notice, and because of Mr. Rodriguez’s position on the state task force.

Hospital code red

From the NY Post:

At least six of the city’s private hospitals are on life support and could be candidates for retrenchment or even closure, shocking financial records show.

The cash-strapped hospitals include Brookdale, Wyckoff Heights and Interfaith in Brooklyn, Westchester Square in The Bronx and Jamaica and Flushing in Queens.

The troubling deficits and crushing debt were spelled out by the hospitals’ own financial reports filed over the past two years with the state government.

Each of the hospitals’ accountants had warned, “These factors raise substantial doubt about the medical center’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

All the hospitals are considered “safety net” facilities that serve mostly poor, medically underserved neighborhoods.

* Jamaica Hospital had a deficit of $72.18 million in 2009. The Queens facility was “delinquent” in making contributions to union-worker benefit plans.

Despite its woes, Jamaica has agreed to provide one-year severance pay to all its vice presidents and senior managers if there’s a shakeup.

* Flushing Hospital had a deficit of $35.45 million in 2009. It had previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998.

Jamaica, Flushing and Brookdale are part of the MediSys Health Network.

Eight city hospitals have closed since 2007.

Berger Commission, take 2

From the Times Ledger:

A state commission is looking to streamline health care in Brooklyn, but residents of southwestern Queens could be affected as well.

The commission will evaluate Wyckoff hospital, which lies just across the border from Ridgewood, and assess the quality of care, access, patient load and financial viability, according to David Hoffman, general counsel for the facility.

“What’s the plan for breaking even?” he said, summarizing the commission’s goals.

The commission is officially called the Medicaid Redesign Team Brooklyn Work Group, but also referred to as the Berger Commission II.

The first Berger Commission was responsible for evaluating health care across the state in 2006, and recommended the merging of several facilities in Queens as well as the closure of Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills.

If the commission were to recommend the closure of Wyckoff hospital, it would be detrimental to Queens residents, according to Vincent Arcuri chairman of Community Board 5, who said that roughly 50 percent of the hospital’s patients come from the borough.

“It’d be pretty tough on the people if it closed,” Arcuri said. “For everyday medical treatment it would be a disaster.”

Wyckoff will be especially scrutinized by the commission along with four other hospitals whose primary revenue comes from safety net programs and not from private sources, Hoffman said.

The commission will make its final recommendations to the state Health Commissioner on Nov. 1.

Hospital generator generating a lot of noise

From BushwickBK:

Wyckoff Heights Medical Center is causing its neighbors some pain.

The hospital parked a generator and a cooling unit on Stockholm Street last month in order to power its ailing air-conditioning system.

But nearby residents complain that the generator’s constant rattling is keeping them up at night and that its diesel fumes are causing respiratory problems.

"It’s like being in a wind tunnel or a really noisy factory floor where all the machines are roaring all at once," said Deborah Brown, a community board member, whose studio is a block away. "It is constant, ambient noise, not episodic bursts."

St. Nicholas Avenue resident Hilda Shen even filmed the generator in action and called 311 several times — which led the city to issue the hospital two violations for noise and air pollution.

And the city found further problems — the hospital was operating the generator without a permit, which earned them another violation and an Environmental Control Board hearing on June 15.

Shen is demanding that the hospital move the generator or shut it down completely.

"The noise of these machines has been enormous, and affected the sleep and health of the neighborhood," said Shen. "The machines run all the time, and the noise is inescapable."

Queens may lose 3 more hospitals

From the NY Post:

One-third of New York City's private hospitals could lose their life support and shut down if Gov. Cuomo goes through with his vow to cut between $2 billion and $3 billion from the state's massive Medicaid program, The Post has learned.

"There are 10 to 12 hospitals that are teetering on the edge [statewide]," said Stephen Berger, a member of Cuomo's Medicaid redesign team, who previously headed a state hospital restructuring panel.

"How many of them are really necessary? How many can be saved? How many can be merged? That's what we have to ask," added Berger.

"Given the amount of money we are spending, we ought to be putting together a much more efficient health-care system with better patient care."

Many of the hospitals teetering on the brink of financial collapse are located in the city's poorer neighborhoods and serve a high number of patients covered by Medicaid, the public insurance program for the needy.

Hospitals considered to be in the fiscal intensive care unit include Brookdale, Kingsbrook, Wyckoff, Interfaith and Brooklyn in Brooklyn, Jamaica and Peninsula in Queens and many institutions in The Bronx including Westchester Square.

So we lost St. John's and Mary Immaculate and were told to go to Wyckoff and Jamaica. I wonder where they will tell us to go when they close those 2?

Fire knocks out LIRR and possibly hospital

A problem has developed on the LIRR and has knocked out all lines except the Port Washington line.

UPDATE 5:00PM: From WNYC:

The Long Island Rail Road is functioning at 60 percent of its capacity this evening and all trains are going local as a result of a fire in a control tower at the Jamaica transfer station.

Officials are instituting numerous steps to handle the crowds. LIRR President Helena Williams told riders not to take the subway to Jamaica but instead said most of them should go to Penn Station and board the train they need to get home--without making any transfers at Jamaica.

She said riders on the Far Rockaway and Hempstead lines should take the subway to Brooklyn's Atlantic Terminal, however, and board those trains there.

And there may also be a fire at Wyckoff Heights Hospital.

Will try to post updates as soon as we get them.