State: All hospitals struggling financially

Public hospitals such as Nassau University Medical Center, which is laying off 175 employees, face especially tough financial straits, but all hospitals statewide are struggling, hospital officials said Monday.

"It's not just public benefit corporations," such as NUMC, said William Van Slyke, spokesman for the Healthcare Association of New York State, which represents 249 hospitals or health care facilities statewide. "We have literally dozens that have announced and done layoffs."

Van Slyke estimated, based on media reports, that more than 6,000 health care workers have been laid off statewide since 2008, in large part because of state and federal cuts to reimbursements to Medicare and Medicaid. "When 60 percent of your costs are labor and you are facing cuts, where do you go?" Van Slyke said.

Kevin Dahill, president of both the Nassau-Suffolk Hospital Council and the Northern Metropolitan Hospital Association, said cuts to supplemental Medicaid reimbursements -- meant to compensate public hospitals with large proportions of low-income patients -- and rising state pension costs have especially hurt public hospitals such as NUMC. Westchester Medical Center, also a public hospital, is facing similar financial issues, he said, and has threatened to lay off as many as 650 health care workers unless unions make concessions.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., the country's largest municipal health-care organization, has cut 2,500 full-time employees during the past three years and "has not ruled out the need for additional layoffs," spokeswoman Erin Hughes said.

Even relatively flush nonprofit hospital systems such as North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, with 13 hospitals on Long Island and in New York City, are tightening their belts. "All department heads are being asked to hold the line," said spokesman Terry Lynam. "We don't anticipate any layoffs at this point, but we are trying to find ways to be as efficient as we can possibly be."

Catholic Health Services of Long Island, with six hospitals and three nursing homes, also is looking for ways to cut costs without layoffs in the face of "declining volume [of patients] and reimbursements and the general uncertainties of health care," spokeswoman Christine Hendriks said.

Officials at Stony Brook University Medical Center, which receives state funding but is not a public benefit corporation, said no layoffs are planned.Health care is the largest employer on Long Island, accounting for nearly 92,000 jobs, according to a recent release by the Healthcare Association of New York State.