May 5, 2014
By Stephanie West
New York, NY — Mayor de Blasio called on SUNY Downstate Medical Center to open negotiations with additional bidders to preserve quality, uninterrupted health care services at Long Island College Hospital.
“Our mission is to save and protect continuous, high-level health care at Long Island College Hospital, and this is the heart of the agreement made between SUNY and the community earlier this year,” said Mayor de Blasio. “To make good on this promise, those proposals that are unable to deliver health care at LICH should be bypassed, and those that can must be engaged. I urge SUNY to open a new dialogue with additional bidders, so health care can be saved at this facility for tens of thousands of New Yorkers.”
Mayor de Blasio’s call comes on the heels of reports that the proposal from current leading bidder BHP will likely not meet the requirements of a settlement struck earlier this year among SUNY, a coalition of community advocates and activists, and elected officials, including the Mayor.
Long Island College Hospital was nearly shuttered last summer, until a coalition of community activists and elected leaders, including then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, launched a series of legal actions to prevent a closure that would have denied care to approximately 75,000 people in Brooklyn who rely on LICH as their primary neighborhood source of health care.
