The city will pump nearly $1 billion into the municipal hospital system to compensate for reduced aid from Albany, even as Mayor Bloomberg threatens layoffs at other agencies, officials said yesterday.
The cash is being delivered over four years to prop up the Health and Hospitals Corp. as it attempts to restructure in the face of looming deficits.
“Some people say, ‘Why are you funding HHC so much?’ ” the mayor said during his budget presentation last week. “It is the ultimate safety net in this city, and we just have to do it.”
One source said the restructuring will require privatizing some nonmedical services.
“They won’t call it that, but that’s what it is,” said the source.
Officials plan to outline a survival strategy today.
The plan is expected to include cuts in the workforce, service reductions, a strategy for increasing federal reimbursements, and new initiatives to shorten the lengths of patients’ hospital stays.
No hospitals will be closed under any scenario.
The city this year is providing $167 million in cash to HHC — which is supposed to be largely self-sustaining — and forgiving $181 million in debts.
Over the following three years, the city will provide another $612 million, or $960 million in total.
One major reason for HHC’s fiscal crisis is that it treated 453,000 uninsured patients last year, up 14 percent from 2006.
At the same time, the mayor is warning he’ll have to cut as many as 11,000 jobs at other city agencies — most in the school system — if Albany reduces aid to the city by $1.3 billion, as Gov. Paterson has proposed.