A Brooklyn judge may have brought light to the end of the tunnel for financially struggling SUNY Downstate Medical Center.
On Monday Justice Johnny Lee Baynes dismissed a suit by the New York State Nurses Association against the potential developer of the Long Island College Hospital building, Fortis Property Group.
The judge's action should facilitate the transfer of LICH operations to New York University from SUNY Downstate.
SUNY Downstate took over LICH in 2011. It has since lost substantial amounts of money running it. SUNY Downstate has about $500 million in obligations, its spokesman has said. It was running out of cash. In recent months the State University of New York system has provided financial support to SUNY Downstate, which operates University Hospital of Brooklyn, to prevent it from running out of money.
The nurses' union recently sued Fortis, complaining that the planned new operator of LICH's emergency room, New York University, was not following the contract, according to the Capital New York web site. The union claimed the contract required NYU to hire existing nurses at the LICH emergency room in staffing its planned emergency room at the facility. When the judge brought NYU into the suit, NYU announced it was withdrawing from its plans to take over LICH emergency room services.
On Monday the judge ruled that since the union was not a party to the contract it could not sue to enforce it. He explained that by bringing in NYU into the suit, he had not been making it a subject to the suit. He just wanted to give NYU an opportunity to respond to the union's accusations.
SUNY Board Chairman H. Carl McCall welcomed the judge's actions.
"Today's action by the court allows us to finally bring a positive health care outcome for the Cobble Hill [neighborhood in Brooklyn] and a sensible solution for the State University of New York," he said.
NYU's Langone Medical Center will bring modern and state-of-the-art patient care to the LICH site as the operator of the facility, McCall said.
"Despite many obstacles, SUNY has worked tirelessly to bring an end to the crisis at LICH. SUNY guaranteed continuity of care by providing services despite significant financial losses even though all parties agreed, and the judge approved, that SUNY had no obligation to do so past May," he said.
"The status quo at the former LICH site is clearly not in the interest of the community or the State University of New York," he said.
"Now, NYU Langone Medical Center can soon begin providing their world-class services and SUNY can return to providing its students with a world-class education."
SUNY Downstate's losses were $6 million in July, the most recently available month of information, SUNY spokesman Robert Bellafiore said on Sept. 24. This was down from a $15 million monthly loss at its peak.
"The whole point of getting out of LICH was to save Downstate and ultimately get tuition payers and taxpayers out of a failing entity," Bellafiore said.
SUNY hopes the transfer of LICH to Fortis and NYU will happen soon.
