Metro

Same-day surgery centers putting Brooklyn hospitals at risk of losing patients

New York City’s financially strapped hospitals are worried they could be put out of business by a new threat: rival “same-day” surgery centers that are popping up across the five boroughs, The Post has learned.

There are 36 so-called ambulatory surgery centers licensed in the city, according to the state Health Department. Many of them are owned and operate independently of hospitals.

Medical experts said the same-day surgery centers are the wave of the future as large hospitals become less important — the reason two Brooklyn hospitals are trying to block a new facility from opening in their midst.

“The future of health care comes in different forms and different shapes, and ambulatory-care surgery centers are part of that change,” said Stephen Berger, who serves on Gov. Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team.

“The big-box hospitals will continue to shrink,” added Berger, who heads a state group analyzing Brooklyn’s health-care system.

The emergence of the surgery centers — state-licensed mini-facilities which perform many of the same operations as hospitals with fewer staff and overhead — has set off alarms among Brooklyn’s financially distressed hospitals.

Brooklyn’s 17 hospitals have a combined debt of $1.2 billion and many lack the resources to invest in their own leaner and more efficient same-day surgery centers.

Two of Brooklyn’s publicly run hospitals — State University of New York Downstate Medical Center and Kings County Hospital — sent notices to the state Health Department opposing the licensing of Omnicare Multi-Specialty Center, which plans to open a surgery center nearby on two floors at 763-765 Nostrand Ave.

SUNY Downstate just announced the closing of its Long Island College Hospital campus in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

The new Omnicare surgery center will include one operating room and one endoscopy procedure room, and a pre-op and recovery area, documents submitted to the state reveal. Omnicare plans to perform 4,400 surgeries in year one and more than 5,300 in year three.

Proposed surgical procedures to be performed include gastroenterology, obstetrics/gynecology, orthopedics, otolaryngology and urology. Omnicare will also provide diagnostic and treatment services, including ophthalmology, pediatrics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, podiatry, prenatal and primary medical care, psychology, physical therapy and radiology.

In opposing Omnicare’s application, King County Hospital, run by the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp., claimed that Omnicare could cut into the hospital’s 1,051 OB/Gyn and gastro surgeries and slash its revenue by $742,000. It also complained Omnicare’s doctors were not affiliated with the hospital.

SUNY Downstate argued that Omnicare imperiled the expansion of its own same-day surgery program. SUNY Downstate reported operating losses of $160 million over a two-year period.

In its review, the state Health Department recommended preliminary approval of the Omnicare surgery center despite the hospitals’ objections. State officials said Central Brooklyn is medically underserved and pointed out that the Omnicare doctors plan to form a partnership with Methodist Hospital.

Currently, Brooklyn has 13 same-day surgery centers — five performing multiple surgeries and eight specializing in one field, state records show.