: 1170434346

Gov. Eliot Spitzer made resolute comments on the statewide hospital situation during his budget address in Albany Wednesday.

Spitzer delivered a health ultimatum to legislators, announcing in no uncertain terms that New York State was finished paying for empty hospital beds.

“We aren’t in the business any longer of subsidizing institutions with empty beds. It’s a cave to cheap politics,” Spitzer said. “It is not happening any longer while I’m governor.

Game over. That’s a line in the sand.”

The comments seemed to clarify Spitzer’s final decision on the Berger Commission law, a piece of legislation that has represented statewide controversy for demanding the closure of underperforming hospitals statewide.

In Queens, the Berger Commission slated New Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills for closure, while combining St. John’s Episcopal and Peninsula Hospital in the Rockaways. It also recommended a 40-bed increase at Queens Hospital Center in Jamaica.
Parkway Hospital, however, feels that they qualify for exemption from closure, specifically because they are not subsidized at all.

“This is one of our strongest arguments,” said New Parkway Vice President of Marketing Fred Stewart. “We’re really not a burden on the state financially. We are the second lowest cost hospital in the State of New York.” Stewart added that the only hospital in the state that costs less is a small local hospital in the Adirondacks.

New Parkway Hospital may have even more ammunition to fight closure in the coming months, as Parkway itself has been in talks with Mount Sinai Hospital about a possible clinical affiliation.

According to Stewart, the affiliation would represent a great opportunity for Parkway to offer “a number of new programs,” including a teaching program at their facility in Forest Hills. Stewart said that his tentative estimate for the start of such an affiliation could be as soon as early spring of this year.

Stewart also said that Parkway’s possible affiliation with Mount Sinai is only in the interest of improving services, independent of their upcoming emergence from bankruptcy, which they announced in early January of this year.

“We would not be owned by Mount Sinai,” Stewart said. “It really is not a financial thing. It enhances the services that we’re able to offer here.”

Representatives from Mount Sinai Hospital did not return multiple requests for comment as of press time.