To no one’s surprise — given how the selection system was heavily weighted at the behest of union and political activists — a company that proposes to run a full-service facility has been selected to take over the bankrupt Long Island College Hospital.
Assuming the deal with SUNY goes through, we wish the new owners all good luck in running their hospital. We ask only one thing: Keep taxpayers out of it.
Brooklyn Health Partners is a newly formed, low-profile company run by a California real-estate developer whose biography says he’s also built medical facilities. Its winning bid calls for a full-service, 300- to 400-bed nonprofit hospital, along with 1,000 new housing units (30 percent of them subsidized) and commercial space.
BHP’s bid also says the hospital will be operated by Quorum Health Resources. But this may be premature, given that the company’s vice president told Capital New York it has “no agreement at this point with anyone to manage that particular hospital.”
Now, most experts believe a full-service hospital is not viable in Brooklyn because the borough has a glut of hospital beds. BHP says, to the contrary, its bid is both operationally and financially viable.
If the company can make a full-service hospital work there, even as LICH is now losing millions a week, more power to it. That would be a win for everyone: the new owners, the old owners, the city and the neighborhood. But making it work ought to mean running it without special tax breaks and subsidies.
If BHP can do that, great. But if it can’t, let’s make sure John and Jane Taxpayer aren’t on the hook for bailing it out.