Health – Brooklyn Bugle

#SaveLICH News: Judge Orders Accounting From SUNY; Mediator Appointed

June 28, 2013

According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Carolyn E. Demarest on Thursday ordered SUNY Downstate to present a full accounting of all LICH property, assets and funds transferred to Downstate, the income derived from the properties, details about the other LICH properties SUNY plans to dispose of and more, no later than August 5.

The Eagle article says “LICH’s money trail is murky at best.” It notes that LICH’s previous owner, Continuum Health Partners, with which SUNY contracted to handle LICH’s billing after the hospital’s sale, has been accused by LICH physicians and staff of failing to bill for many services performed after the sale. Judge Demarest’s order also requires SUNY to account for $15 million it withdrew from a fund last year that was supposed to be used exclusively to pay for LICH’s costs of operation.

In a related development, the Daily News reports that retired New York Supreme Court judge, former state senator, and city councilman William Thompson Sr., father of mayoral hopeful William Thompson, has been appointed by Judge Johnny Lee Baynes to act as a “mediator” in the dispute between LICH doctors and nurses and SUNY over SUNY’s attempt to close LICH.

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/8892

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Contact Cuomo to Save LICH

June 12, 2013

The Brooklyn Heights Association urges us all to write, call, or e-mail (or all three) Governor Cuomo asking his help to save Long Island College Hospital. While acknowledging that there are allegedly seven suitors possibly interested in buying LICH, nevertheless:

SUNY Downstate has failed to turn over the LICH financial records parties have requested. Moreover, SUNY Downstate has made representations about LICH finances that are simply not true. Without open books, potential suitors cannot evaluate LICH’s economic viability — and there is no assurance that the disposition of LICH will be a fair one. SUNY Downstate’s actions have revived fears that its real goal is to sell the land to a real estate developer.

Instructions on how to contact the Governor are on the BHA website.

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/8799

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Around Brooklyn

Judge Rules SUNY Board Acted Illegally on LICH Closing

March 15, 2013

The Times reports that New York Supreme Court Justice Johnny Baynes, who earlier extended a temporary restraining order against SUNY’s shutdown of Long Island College Hospital, has ruled that the SUNY board acted in violation of New York State’s open meetings law, and vacated the board’s decision to close LICH. According to the Times:

The trustees’ use of a vague notice, a “skeletal statement of purpose in the written agenda,” and the timing of a two-hour closed executive session on Feb. 7, the day before the public vote, “seems intentionally designed to shield the purpose of the meetings from the general public and obstruct the transparency required by the Open Meetings Law,” the decision said, noting that the trustees “are not unsophisticated.”

The story also quotes a SUNY spokesman as saying that “the ruling hinges on a procedural technicality” and that “the board Would move swiftly to fix the problem.” If, as expected, the board again votes to close LICH, the plan must then be submitted to the State Department of Health, which could refuse to approve the closure, as it did a plan by LICH’s former owner, Continuum Health Partners, to close LICH’s obstetrics and pediatrics departments just over four years ago.

Source: Cobble Hill Blog
http://cobblehillblog.com/archives/8216