Compromise Pending After Medical Center, State Officials Talk

Long Beach Medical Center and state health department officials called their meeting in Manhattan last week “productive,” as both parties try to reach a compromise on the fate of the Hurricane Sandy-damaged and financially-reeling hospital.

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While Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah said after Friday’s meeting that both sides want “high-quality, sustainable health care,” LBMC Chief Executive Douglas Melzer said both parties will work “very expeditiously” to develop an acceptable health care plan, according to Newsday.

The meeting was held after the state refused to allow the 162-bed hospital to reopen in June, when LBMC officials said the bayside facility was rebuilt after it sustained about $56 million in flood damages in Hurricane Sandy last October. The state said LBMC must build a financially viable business model and requested the facility merge with South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside. But LBMC officials maintain that an acute-care hospital with emergency services is necessary on the barrier island, given its isolation from the Nassau County mainland and distance from neighboring hospitals.

Last Friday, the health department documented the hospital’s financial woes and its patient and safety issues, and offered LBMC three options: remain closed, establish a freestanding emergency department, and retool the inpatient facility. But LBMC officials project a financial loss from a freestanding emergency room, and want to keep some inpatient beds, which reimburse at higher rates, so as to offset costs to operate an emergency room, according to Newsday.  

Bill Schwartz, a health department spokesman, said the hospital’s financial problems -- which include losing more than $2 million annually since 2008 led to the stalemate, not its Sandy-related damages, the costs of which will be largely reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Prior to Friday’s talks, Schwartz told the Associated Press:

"What Sandy did was accelerate what ultimately would have happened; they would have had to change their business model sooner or later, due to the serious fiscal and operational issues they face.”

Sharon Player, LBMC’s director of public affairs, told the Associated Press that the hospital lost money in recent years in partly because 80 percent of all admissions are patients on Medicaid and Medicare, federal programs that offer lower reimbursements than private insurance companies. Said Player of the state: "LBMC was not on their radar. The storm has made it convenient for them to take 162 beds."

Petition Drive

Meanwhile, Dan Hayes, LBMC’s director of nursing for the emergency room and intensive care, authored a petition calling on Gov. Cuomo to reopen the hospital and retain its emergency department services, and within two weeks the petition garnered some 13,000 signatures from people across the barrier island.

Hayes and others how organized the petition have presented it to other elected officials, including Sen. Dean Skelos, Legislator Denise Ford and Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, according to the Long Beach Herald. Hayes said about the petition:

“We understand that there are many factors involved in the decision. But we want them to realize that our primary concern is public safety.”