The Brooklyn Work Group--What's Missing

By Raanan Geberer Originally published in Brooklyn Daliy Eagle BROOKLYN — The recent report by the Brooklyn Work Group of the New York State Department of Health’s Medicaid Redesign Team was in the news recently. Many people were relieved that the team didn’t recommend any hospital closings, although it did recommend the consolidation of several hospitals that are in dire financial straits. Lost in the particulars of the report, however, was the actual makeup of this Brooklyn Work Group. It was chaired by Stephen Berger, chairman of Odyssey Investment Partners, “a New York investment firm that specializes in private corporation transactions.” Berger also chaired the New York State Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century in 2005-06, a commission that was criticized by many as the “hospital closing commission.” It closed nine hospitals statewide, including Victory Memorial in Brooklyn, Parkway in Queens and Cabrini in Manhattan. As for the other four members, they are all healthcare and government executives. Ramon Jesus Rodriguez has served as CEO of two HMOs; Elizabeth Swain is the CEO of the Community Health Care Association of New York State; William Toby is a longtime federal health administrator, and Anthony Webb has served as the commissioner of several state agencies. What’s missing here? What’s missing is any input from the health professions or the local communities. This is a commission that deals with hospitals, after all. One would think that some physicians who chair medical departments at local hospitals and/or act as professors of medicine would be represented. Nurses, who work with patients on a day-to-day basis, should also be represented, as should the healthcare unions. And what about public officials and leaders of civic organizations? These people are represented in almost every other temporary government task force that I’ve ever heard of. For example, would a task force on the Gowanus Expressway or the Second Avenue Subway be made up of only transportation engineers? I doubt it — it would also include representatives of nearby communities. Finally, since this report involves public funds dispensed by the state to local hospitals, shouldn’t the state legislature also have a say? In this case, however, the Brooklyn Work Group is only made up of financial and high-level managerial professionals, all of them with strong ties to the highest levels of what Jack Newfield once called “the permanent government” and “Occupy Wall Street” protesters more recently called “the One Percent.” It’s very likely that the one of the main objectives of the study is not to improve healthcare delivery and health services, but to protect the interests of the state’s business and government elites. At times these objectives may coincide. Increasingly nowadays, unfortunately, they do not. For the majority of people in a district to have no say in whether services in their local hospital are expanded, cut back or ended is not compatible with true democracy. * * *