NYC and state lawmakers urge Gov. Hochul to sign bill to increase public input on hospital closures

New York City Council members and state lawmakers are pressing Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign legislation that would increase community input on proposed hospital closures.

Local Input for Community HospitalsThe LICH Act passed both houses of the state Legislature in June but is still awaiting the governor’s approval.

City council members introduced a resolution urging Hochul to sign the bill, and state lawmakers who sponsored the legislation expressed its importance during a Council hearing Tuesday on the local impact of hospital closures.

Sam Spkony, Hochul’s spokesman, said Hochul is still reviewing the legislation.

LICH Law is named after a hospital in Brooklyn. closed In 2014, following intense social opposition. The bill gained momentum this year when the closure of two other controversial hospitals was also tabled: Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Downtown Manhattan and SUNY Downtown in Brooklyn. Both hospitals are still operating, but their futures remain uncertain.

Democratic State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who represents parts of Brooklyn and is running for mayor of New York City, testified at the hearing that the public outreach process regarding the proposed closure of SUNY Downstate earlier this year was “hasty, opaque, and wholly inadequate.” ” The outreach process also included invitation-only focus groups held after Hochul and SUNY officials publicly announced a plan to close the hospital and replace it with an outpatient clinic.

“This was frankly an affront to my community and I am proud that we mobilized to fight against this plan,” Myrie said.

Hochul ultimately agreed to form a working group on SUNY Downstate’s future, which had until April 2025 to issue its recommendations.

If enacted, the LICH Act would require the state health commissioner to hold a public forum on the planned hospital closure at least 150 days before the scheduled date. The legislation would also require hospital operators to submit detailed assessments of how the closure will impact health equity in the neighborhood and what operators will do to ameliorate adverse effects. Similar assessments are already required for certain types of hospital service interruptions, but not for complete closures.

Council members on Tuesday grilled city health officials about their role in closing local hospitals. Officials said they had little information as the state health department was deciding whether to approve the closures.

The city’s acting health commissioner, Dr. Because of the considerations required for these changes, the city is sometimes consulted about the potential health equity impact of a hospital cutting beds or other services, Michelle Morse said. He said the same process is not followed for closures and the city is often not consulted.

Still, city officials said they are preparing for the possibility they will have to do so. scale up Services are provided at public hospitals located near hospitals at risk of closure (especially Bellevue in Manhattan and Kings County in Brooklyn).

Assemblywoman Mercedes Narcisse of Brooklyn said those preparations should have been made much earlier in the process of evaluating a potential hospital closure.