NUMC's ongoing money woes
NUMC board chairman Bob Detor says that money is heavily restricted, and even if he could use it to fill any hole he wanted, it wouldn't solve the hospital's fiscal problems for long. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Last Thursday, several hundred CSEA members, supporters and community leaders gathered on the lawn of the Nassau University Medical Center to protest what they perceive as an ongoing and unnecessary push to close the public-mission hospital.
When CSEA Long Island Region 1 President Jerry Laricchiuta spoke to the crowd, he argued that the hospital has $200 million in cash that contradicts its incessant claims of poverty.
But NUMC board chairman Bob Detor, now in the role for seven months, says that money is heavily restricted, and even if he could use it to fill any hole he wanted, it wouldn’t solve the hospital’s fiscal problems for long. He also says he does not want to close the hospital, but he does believe it needs to change dramatically if it is going to survive.
“They lambasted me at the rally and at the teleconferenced board meeting afterward, as if I have $200 million stashed that I should be investing in the hospital’s future,” Detor said. “But that’s not the case, and even if it were, that amount wouldn’t go as far as people think.”
The cash in question, Detor told The Point, includes $121 million from the CARES Act, $26 million in advanced Medicare reimbursement funds that is already slated to be spent, about $34 million from a state Medicaid program, DSRIP, meant to push for efficient redesign of the delivery of health care and another $30 million of cash on hand to run the place.
And Detor says thanks to the strings attached to the CARES Act, much of that money is intended to cover losses from and response to COVID-19. For many hospitals that means using it to make up for canceled elective surgeries. But at NUMC, where surgeries are only 11% of revenue, as opposed to the 35% industry norm, the money is harder to use.
“We’ve spent about $17 million on adding to our pharmaceutical and PPE stocks, because we are supposed to be at a 90-day stockpile by the end of September,” Detor said, adding that he’d like to get a plan approved to become a regional surge center, with 200-250 beds ready for any emergency. “I do think that plan would be an eligible use of CARES money,” he said.
But Detor said freeing up much of the rest will take a political fix by Congress to let the hospital use the money for whatever it needs. That’s one area where Detor and the CSEA agree.
Laricchiuta and Nassau County CSEA President Ron Gurrieri say they are pushing hard at the Schumers, Zeldins, Suozzis and Kings of the world to get the change made.
But Detor also says a bigger cash boost now would not change the long-term fiscal reality of NUMC: the 2020 budget arrived with an $86 million deficit, and that was with projections that both the hospital and its nursing home, A. Holly Patterson, would have 15% to 20% more full beds than they currently do. And Detor lists other financially crippling realities, including $174 million in debt, $500 million in retiree health care obligations, $400 million in needed infrastructure improvement, overstaffing at the nursing home he says the county can no longer afford to run and an increasingly broke New York State already subsidizing NUMC to the tune of at least $80 million a year.
Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
