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“CLOSING ST. MARY’S IS IMMORAL” – BOROUGH PRESIDENT MARTY MARKOWITZ Governor’s Commission Ignores Pleas of Brooklyn Officials and Health Care Providers

While approving the closure of St. Mary’s Hospital, now slated for October 4, the State has ignored the pleas of Brooklyn officials to ensure that area residents have adequate medical care. “Allowing St. Mary’s to close, with absolutely no plan in place to provide vital services to the community, is a mind-boggling failure on the State’s part,” said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “When poor people get sick or even die because they can’t see a doctor, we don’t call it neglect or genocide, but it is immoral to shutter another health care facility in Central Brooklyn.”

“I called upon the Governor’s Commission for Health Care Services to hold a meeting in Brooklyn and to begin developing a regional plan that takes into account the needs of Central Brooklyn residents and the challenges of their health care providers,” Markowitz said. “To date, all I have been told is that they are not ready to meet and don’t know when they will be.” The commission was created by Governor George Pataki this spring to examine the needs and capacities of the health care system and make appropriate recommendations. “The State of New York must invest in Central Brooklyn, which is home to some 900,000 residents,” Markowitz said. “The medical safety net in Central Brooklyn, long fragile, is now on the verge of complete disintegration.” The borough president’s July 1 letter, sent to Commission Chair Stephen Berger and to the fourteen other members appointed by the governor in June, was signed by ten elected officials representing Brooklyn and the directors of 11 Brooklyn hospitals.

One-quarter of New York State’s uninsured residents live in Brooklyn. The hospitals, clinics, and community health facilities of Central Brooklyn overwhelmingly serve uninsured patients and those covered by Medicaid, a situation that systemically renders these health care providers unable to meet their operating costs. As a result, Interfaith Hospital closed its maternity and child health unit late last year and shut down six outpatient clinics located in some of Brooklyn’s most medically-underserved neighborhoods.

“Every year I have called on the governor to increase funding so that Brooklyn residents can receive quality health care,” Markowitz said.  “Instead, he has consistently enacted significant cuts. No business could survive without an increase in revenue for the past 12 years, yet Medicaid reimbursement rates have not increased during that time. No organization can operate indefinitely when it must provide 40 percent or more of its services for free, but that’s how our hospitals are expected to operate.”