NYC Hospitals In Crisis

After yesterday's news that St. Vincent's Hospital is struggling to survive debts amounting to $700 million and cutting employee salaries by 25%, comes more bad news today for New York City hospitals.

Eight lawsuits were filed against city hospitals for cheating more than 100,000 employees of overtime pay. Registered nurses charged that they were expected to be available without breaks, and should have been compensated. Among the hospitals named in the suit are Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Medical and New York University Hospital Center.

If that wasn't enough bad news, state budget cuts may force public hospitals in the city to cut 3,900 jobs. The president of Health and Hospitals Corporation, Alan Aviles, said they have been downsizing through attrition, but layoffs may be in the future.

Comments

[Peter Noble 2]

04:36 PM on 03/28/2010

A for profit system has no place in Health Care. I am a patient at St. Vincents Cancer Center, now owned by a Drug Company. The nurses though are paid for through St. Vincents and they work horrendous hours and it burns me up that they are worked like indentured slaves.

American Capitalism in control of Health Care kills Americans and is evil.

Albany should be under an Federal control for their mendacity and utter corruption. They all need to be replaced. There's not an honest member of any party in Albany.

Dr. Hymen who has a blog on HP for his "health" services for his own profit, flew to Haiti to cry and cry and write purple prose about the plucky and ever cheerful Haitians. I await his report from St. Vincents and his tearful demand for more aid for the poor of the lower Westside. I will pay for his taxi fare.

Excuse my cynicism but I go every week to St. Vincents..

And Bob Dole's HCR praised here by Dems as a radical victory for Obama will do nothing at all to save the people of NYC. Indeed the HCR has made things so much, much worse for the poor there's over a billion dollars in Medicaid cuts for NY. Thanks Gillibrand so much!

[Deleuzian Nomad]

12:55 PM on 03/29/2010

Have to agree...not all institutions can be run like corporations. I am not sure we should head into absolute judgments of "good" and "evil"...rather, we need a more humane system that reconfigures what it means to foster the "public good" and reevaluation of the "profit" system that has entered the public cultural imagination. Unfortunately, such an exercise probably requires a fundamental paradigm shift and I am not sure whether the public is truly ready for it....perhaps when many of the hospitals close down....

[catbite]

10:31 PM on 03/27/2010

Hospitals are going to all come crashing down because they cannot sustain their "growth." As more and more people seek out county hospitals because they don't have insurance, the healthcare system is going to implode. No one is going to want to get into or stay in nursing because they work such bizarre hours and are stressed out because they are shorthanded. Many doctors expect everyone to wait on them hand and foot. Glad I do not work in a hospital anymore because as one of my doctors said, "It's all about the money."

[banker67]

04:20 PM on 03/26/2010

Well, if they're not profit centers, who cares?
In our corporate culture, it's just something for PR and legal to deal with. Not a concern of top management, you understand.