PEF peers into budget, page by page, department by department
Selling SUNY hospitals would be silly
Another of the state Executive Budget’s retread proposals for 2005-06 is the privatization of the state University of New York’s three teaching hospitals — Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and Stony Brook Health Science Center on Long Island — by giving the SUNY Board of Trustees the authority to sell these hospitals without legislative approval.
The state’s own consultants have documented that these SUNY hospitals actually operate more efficiently than 75 percent of their academic peers, and that any financial problems they have experienced are the direct result of reduced state support.
After all, these are teaching hospitals that serve a dual purpose of educating New York’s future doctors, nurses and other health providers for the 21st Century and providing top-notch acute-care services for their regions.
In 2001, SUNY contracted with Price Waterhouse Coopers to conduct a study of the SUNY hospitals’ financial health. The report confirmed, not only that the SUNY hospitals operate more efficiently than most of their academic peers, but they also have good market positions and potential.
PEF continues to oppose their privatization because there is no evidence that privatizing them will benefit the people of New York in any way.
Furthermore, selling these state hospitals could compromise medical care to the regions that depend on them, especially poor and indigent residents. And, the quality of care to all could suffer as civil service protection for employees is threatened.
PEF is waging a vigorous advertising and lobbying effort to block this proposal.
— Sherry Halbrook
The
Communicator March 05
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