Opinion

A surgical strike

The clock’s ticking on New York’s financially strapped hospitals. Unfortunately, if bureaucrats have their way, they’re likely to kill off the cure: a dose of competition.

As The Post’s Carl Campanile reported this week, New York’s large hospitals now find themselves challenged by smaller, private “same day” surgery centers operating with less staff and lower overhead.

One such firm, Omnicare Multi-Specialty Center, is getting set to open a facility in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights. But its license is being challenged by Kings County Hospital — run by the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. — on the grounds that Omnicare’s opening would mean a $750,000 hit for Kings County’s revenue.

Isn’t that what competition is all about? If the hospitals are losing money here, it’s because they’re less efficient, or because patients believe they’re getting better service and value from the surgery centers.

The fact is, the hospital status quo has long been broken. As the Berger Commission noted a half-dozen years ago, a surfeit of beds in New York hospitals forces all to operate at less-than-optimum capacity.

The Berger panel recommended gradual, orderly closures and mergers to spread the pain and spare communities disruption. Alas, there hasn’t been enough will in Albany to see that through.

The courts haven’t helped. When SUNY trustees for Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn — facing losses of $4 million a month — voted to close, state Supreme Court Justice Betsy Barros granted its employees union’s request to stay the move. Next week, she’ll have a full hearing on whether the hospital can shut down.

The reality is that hospitals such as LICH aren’t long for this world. They can’t be kept open simply to serve their employees. Eventually, they will close.

The question is what will take their place.

The hospitals and unions regard the new surgery centers as a problem. But if these centers do a better job competing for patients, we’d suggest it’s healthier to see them as part of the solution.