Editorial: Nassau hospital merits state aid
Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow is seeking $30-million state grant to improve its care. (July 15, 2011) Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
The Nassau University Medical Center needs Albany's help to adapt and survive as the way health care is delivered and financed nationally evolves.
As Nassau's lone safety-net hospital, NUMC serves many of the region's disadvantaged and uninsured. Since 2005, it has been working with the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, with some success, to improve the quality of care it delivers. But it's struggling to stay afloat.
That makes NUMC an ideal candidate for three things it's seeking from the state: a $30-million share of $450 million in grants available this spring under the state's Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law, temporarily higher Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements, and relief from antitrust laws to allow a closer affiliation with North Shore-LIJ.
Hospitals around the state are vying for health care efficiency-law grants, but Brooklyn, home to a half-dozen hospitals in dire straits, appears to have the inside track. Those hospitals need help. But so does NUMC, a nonprofit no longer owned by the county. Long Island's legislative delegation must see that it doesn't come up empty-handed.
NUMC would use its $30-million state grant to build an expanded primary care, mental health and outpatient substance abuse facility, while eliminating 50 inpatient beds. It would formalize a "transformational partnership" with North Shore-LIJ, begin a new primary care residency program and develop an electronic medical records system in common with North Shore-LIJ.
NUMC should benefit financially from North Shore's muscular assistance in negotiating higher reimbursement rates with private managed care companies.
NUMC's unionized workers oppose the deal. Officials of its Civil Service Employees Association local are wary of antitrust relief for North Shore-LIJ, which, with its 15-hospital network, is the dominant player on Long Island. They fear closer ties with that behemoth will be the beginning of the end for NUMC.
The greater danger would be for NUMC to continue as it is. Nassau County needs for NUMC to survive, and Albany should help ensure it does.
