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Gov. Kathy Hochul recently signed the Health Equity Assessment Act, which advocates say will help address the impact of decades of hospital closures and consolidations across the state, which left certain communities—primarily low-income and neighborhoods of color—underserved when it comes to health facilities.

When St. Vincent’s Hospital closed its doors in the West Village for the last time in spring 2010, neighbors and public health experts questioned where its patients would now go instead. How much further away is the next ER? How many minutes might it add to a patient’s trip in a potentially life-threatening situation?

Those questions arise each time a hospital closes, or shrinks: Like when Harlem’s North General Hospital shut down in 2010, or Peninsula Hospital Center shuttered in Queens in 2012, or when Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center closed its inpatient services this past summer, part of its merger with two other East Brooklyn hospitals.

Over the last several decades, dozens of hospitals across the state have shuttered, consolidated with larger providers or pulled back services. In 2006, there were 71 hospitals in New York City alone, City Limits reported at the time; the state’s Health Department today lists just 59.

That shrinking network forces other nearby hospitals to pick up the strain—often safety net providers, like public hospitals, where patients are more likely to be uninsured or on Medicaid—and leaves some neighborhoods with fewer healthcare resources than others.

Queens, for instance, has only 1.5 hospital beds for every 1,000 residents, compared to 6.4 beds per 1,000 people in Manhattan, according to one analysis. Those differences became even more visible—and consequential—during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which Queens was particularly hard hit. During the early peaks of the crisis, officials scrambled to increase hospital capacity, setting up beds at the Javits Center and clearing CUNY dorms for use as potential medical facilities.

“The COVID-19 impact made it really clear that hospital beds and other healthcare resources are not distributed equitably around the state,” said Lois Uttley, coordinator at Community Voices for Health System Accountability (CVHSA), a coalition of public health advocates.

New legislation, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul last week, aims to address that by changing the Certificate of Need (CON) process, the state’s main mechanism for overseeing healthcare facilities. The Health Equity Assessment Act (S.1451A / A.191A) will require any hospital or clinic applying for a CON—through which the state grants approval for major changes like a closure, merger, downsizing or new construction—to assess the impact that change will have on the communities a facility serves.

Under the law, providers will have to file a “health equity impact assessment” looking at how its plans might effect certain medically underserved groups, like low-income residents or New Yorkers with disabilities. “In some ways, you could analogize it to an environmental impact statement,” Assemblymember Richard Gottfried said during a hearing on the bill in June.

Experts and advocates say it will help officials better plan for a more equitable allocation of health resources around the state, and give patients an indirect voice in decisions that could impact their care.

“Currently, the state process of reviewing and approving and disapproving major health facility transactions is not transparent, or consumer-friendly,” said Uttley. There are no public hearings; CON decisions are ultimately made by the health commissioner and state’s Public Health and Health Planning Council (PHHPC), which critics say is disproportionately made up of health care executives rather than patient advocates.

The Health Equity Assessment legislation represents “a major step forward” in terms of “getting the voices of affected communities into the conversation,” Uttley added.

While Hochul only signed the bill last week, it was passed by lawmakers at the end of the legislative session in June; five reps voted against it in the Senate, and seven members opposed it in the Assembly. That included Assemblyman Kevin Byrne of the Hudson Valley, who said he was worried the legislation would “prolong an already burdensome” CON process and make it harder for health care facilities to grow.

“When we’re at a time trying to increase health care capacity, I’m not sure this is the right way,” he said during a June hearing on the bill.

Assemblymember Andy Goodell, a Republican who represents Chautauqua County, expressed similar concerns at the same hearing.

“I’ve had hospital administrators come to me and point out that their private physician groups were able to quickly buy the latest imaging technology or the laboratory equipment or set up a satellite office all done, designed, build, ordered, paid for, constructed before the hospital could get to first base on the CON process,” he said, according a transcript of the meeting.

But Gottfried, the bill’s sponsor, countered that the impact assessment is not expected to greatly complicate CON applications, and that the legislation exempts smaller community health centers that largely serve low-income patients.

Uttley and other supporters argue the new law will give the state more leverage in the CON approval process, to better look out for “the people who live in that community and depend on that hospital for care.”

“It makes more visible what the impact might be,” she said.

READ MORE:

• As COVID Surges Again in NYC Shelters, Advocates Renew Call for Hotel Rooms
• What’s Driving the Shortage of Home Healthcare Workers in NY? Low Wages, Advocates Say

The post New Law Will Require NY Hospitals to Assess Community Impact of Closures, Mergers appeared first on City Limits.

City Limits staff talk about the biggest stories in the last 12 months; TurboVax creator Huge Ma discusses his 2022 run for State Assembly in Queens.

A lot can happen in the span of 12 months. 

Back on Jan. 1, Andrew Cuomo was sitting comfortably in the Governor’s Mansion, planning his bid for a fourth term in Albany. Mayor Bill de Blasio was beginning his final year in office, with Andrew Yang the frontrunner to replace him. And Donald Trump was trying to reverse the results of the presidential election, with far-right extremists still a few days away from rioting in the Capitol.

A year later, Cuomo is out. De Blasio is set to announce a bid for governor. And Trump is, well, still lying about the results of the presidential election.

Closer to home, there’s a new class of city councilmembers taking office—and for the first time, most of them are women, including new Speaker Adrienne Adams. Mayor-elect Eric Adams is ready to move into Gracie Mansion and take over a city struggling with record-high COVID-19 cases, a pandemic-afflicted economy, a rising murder rate and an ongoing homelessness crisis.

Much has changed over the past year, but one thing certainly hasn’t: For the 45th year City Limits covered the most important stories in the city and state. We have continued documenting movements for tenants’, workers’ and immigrants’ rights, uncovering problems in the city’s response to homelessness and holding officials accountable to their rezoning promises.

On Sunday, City Limits Executive Editor Jeanmarie Evelly joined City Watch on WBAI 99.5 FM to reflect on the most memorable stories of the past year and to look ahead to 2022.

She also discussed City Limits’ 45th Anniversary, including her comprehensive “45 Stories, 45 Years” project and her weekly Flashback Friday series.

In addition to Evelly, the Dec. 26 episode featured an interview with Queens Assembly candidate Huge Ma, the software engineer who created the TurboVax Twitter account that helped thousands of New Yorkers make their vaccine appointments.

As City Limits’ Ese Olumhense reported earlier this month, Ma is willing to trade his folk hero status for a seat in the state legislature, where he will be ridiculed by political opponents and yelled at by the neighbors he wants to represent.

Be sure to stick with City Watch and City Limits in 2022. It’s going to be an exciting year.  

The post City Watch: Looking Back at NYC in 2021 & to the Year Ahead appeared first on City Limits.

Those who’ve tried to use the service in recent weeks say there haven’t been enough hotel rooms to meet demand. They report delays in obtaining a room, sometimes three days or more, even as the CDC recently cut its recommended isolation time down to five days.

When Sam Bellamy tested positive for COVID on Dec. 16, he immediately called the city’s hotline for a free hotel room. He lives in Brooklyn with two roommates, one of whom was unable to get the booster due to health concerns, so he knew isolating at home would be tricky. 

Bellamy waited on hold for an hour and a half to register, only to realize he would need more time to gather his work effects before being picked up by the free transport service the city offers as part of its COVID-19 Isolation Hotel Program. So he asked to be picked up the next day. But when he called back that Friday night, he was told he hadn’t even been put in the system. So he had to get registered anew and begin the wait again.

He started doing sponge baths in his shared bathroom instead of showering without a mask, expecting to be into a hotel room soon enough. A friend of his who used the program in November told him she’d been picked up in mere hours. He called the hotline daily, waiting on hold for up to two hours each time.

But it wasn’t until the night of Dec. 19—three days after his diagnosis and his initial attempt to secure an isolation space—that Sam was given a room in the LaGuardia Plaza Hotel in Queens.

“First thing I did when I got here was take a shower!” he said.

As the omicron variant overwhelms New York City, residents with roommates and family they need to isolate from are calling the city’s free hotel room program, called Take Care, for a safe place to recuperate. Launched at the start of the pandemic, the service provides participants with three meals a day, round-trip transportation, medication delivery and more—all free of charge.

But as local politicians and media have continued touting the program’s benefits, spiking COVID-19 cases appear to be straining its efficiency. Those who’ve tried to use the service in recent weeks (including this reporter) say there haven’t been enough hotel rooms to meet the demand. Residents are reporting long delays in obtaining an isolation room, of three days or more, even as the CDC recently cut its recommended isolation time down to five days.

The delays are particularly concerning for people who are already unhoused. COVID cases are once again rapidly spreading through the city’s shelter system, where residents are often housed in congregate, dorm-style rooms with multiple people.

A worker at a nonprofit that employs some unhoused people told City Limits they called the hotel hotline to try and secure a room for an employee who could no longer stay in a homeless shelter due to a COVID exposure. They waited on hold for four hours last Wednesday, Dec. 22, and for six hours the next day, they said—and still were unable to get through to a real person.

NYC Health + Hospitals declined to answer questions about how many isolation hotel rooms are currently contracted for the program, or what average wait times are for the rooms, but acknowledged the capacity issues fueled by increasing omicron cases.

“Our Take Care hotel program has seen a rise in numbers, as was to be expected around the holidays and with the colder weather bringing people indoors. Like many other industries, staffing challenges have impacted our operations,” a representative told City Limits in a statement. “We are working to add more hotel rooms by the first week of January to accommodate visitors and residents of New York, especially those with roommates and multi-generational families, who may otherwise not have a safe, comfortable place to quarantine or isolate.”

Rumors of the long wait times for the hotel rooms are dissuading some New Yorkers from even calling. Cissy Yu, 26, took advantage of the program in November when she tested positive for COVID. She unfortunately contracted the virus again on Dec. 21. She decided that this time, she’d try to stay home, but was still concerned about exposing her housemates.

“I kind of assumed the hotel would be really backed up because so many people have COVID right now,” she said, adding that she read about the days-long waits on a Reddit thread. “Last time I was there, a nurse mentioned when they get a surge of patients they’re not staffed very well to handle huge loads.”

The omicron variant has caused such a surge. The CDC estimated that over 90 percent of COVID cases in the tri-state area are caused by the new variant. Prior to this latest spike, the hotel room system appeared to be working smoothly. When Christopher Nickelson, 27, called the hotel hotline in mid-November, he remembers being on hold for about five minutes and was able to schedule a pickup for the same day.

“The program was really such a lifesaver,” he said. Nickelson said he was experiencing multiple COVID symptoms and was so sapped of energy that he knew he couldn’t cook for himself every day. The LaGuardia Plaza Hotel, where he was placed, provided three meals a day, and he had regular check-ins with a nurse.

Nickelson said a nurse told him that during his stay, the hotel was around half capacity. At that time, NYC’s seven-day case average was about 1,400. The Queens hotel near the airport has 358 rooms, according to its website. As of Dec. 27, the city’s seven-day COVID case rate was over 20,000, having doubled in less than a week.

It’s not clear if LaGuardia Plaza is the only hotel the city is using for its isolation program; Health + Hospital officials did not respond to City Limits’ inquiries about how many sites it is currently contracting with. The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) has also leased rooms at at least four hotels specifically for homeless shelter residents who’ve been exposed to or tested positive for COVID, officials said last week.

The city appears to be working to expand the Take Care program to new hotels. James Fitzgerald, 27, was given a room in the Holiday Inn at LaGuardia Airport on Dec.16 after testing positive. He said a staffer told him that this hotel was slated to open later in the year, but the city expedited the process to open it that week. (The Holiday Inn did not respond to a request for comment, but its website says the hotel has 217 rooms.)

This reporter is one of the many New Yorkers who faced this issue. I received my positive COVID result after waiting in line for a rapid test for over three hours on Sunday, Dec.19—so I called the city’s hotel program hotline. After a two-hour hold, I was placed in the queue and told I should hear about a room in 24 hours.

But that time came and went, and on subsequent daily calls, I was told that they were unable to give me an estimate and they were backed up. Nine days later, I’m still at home. 

Have you had an experience with the city’s COVID-19 Isolation Hotel Program? Tell us about it by emailing editor@citylimits.org

The post Long Waits for NYC’s COVID-19 Isolation Hotel Rooms, As Omicron Cases Spike appeared first on City Limits.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is engaging with stepped-up Republican efforts to recruit him into next year’s Senate race, CNN has learned.

The popular Republican governor’s entry into the Senate race in a blue state would immediately put Democrats on defense in what would otherwise be a sleepy reelection for Sen. Chris Van Hollen — and potentially upend Democratic efforts to hold onto the Senate majority in next year’s midterms. But running now would require Hogan to chart an anti-Donald Trump path through GOP politics, which so far no prominent Republican has been able to pull off.

Senior Republicans have been citing Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win in last month’s Virginia governor’s race, urging Hogan — who’s term-limited as governor — to look at that campaign as a model for how to run while keeping the former President at a distance and focus on local issues instead of the national GOP agenda.

Trying to appeal to the independent-minded Hogan, several prominent Republicans have also pitched him and his staff on the idea that if he won and helped Republicans achieve a narrow majority, he could be the GOP’s version of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, according to four sources familiar with these efforts. As the most conservative Democrat in the evenly divided Senate, Manchin holds enormous power within his caucus as a frequent swing vote. (Hogan currently co-chairs No Labels, the bipartisan group that Manchin previously co-chaired.)

But all of those calculations look different in Maryland — a far more blue state than Virginia, where President Joe Biden won by 33 percentage points and there hasn’t been a competitive Senate race for decades.

Asked for comment, a Hogan adviser pointed to previous interviews in which the governor has shot down the idea of running.

“It’s not something that I’m really taking a serious look at,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” last month when asked if he would run for Senate. In July, he told CBS News, “I have no interest whatsoever in running for the United States Senate,” adding that with his business and executive background, “being one guy in Washington and arguing with 99 other people and never getting anything done just doesn’t have that much appeal to me.”

Hogan’s biggest problem might be within his own party. Even if he didn’t draw a strong primary challenger and secured the nomination, he would need heavy Republican support in November. Trump has already endorsed a primary opponent to Hogan’s preferred successor in the governor’s race, and the former President has made clear that he’s looking to enforce a loyalty test in Republican politics.

People who’ve spoken to Hogan are saying that the worsening political environment for Democrats since the summer and the prospect of actually being able to win appear to be factoring into his thinking. He’s not the only Maryland Republican contemplating a relatively late entry into a statewide race: former lieutenant governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, another prominent anti-Trump member of the party, has been making another round of calls about jumping into the governor’s race, sources tell CNN.

Democrats are taking note. Speaking about Hogan at several recent Democratic events in the state, Van Hollen has told people privately, “I’m running as if he’s in,” according to several people who’ve heard him.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, are among those who have reached out to Hogan in recent weeks. And though the governor has publicly disavowed interest, he continues to take the meetings and the calls.

“You name the Republican, they’ve called and asked him to run,” said one GOP operative familiar with the recruitment efforts.

Republicans haven’t been making the case to Hogan just based on his own popularity. They’ve also been pointing to Van Hollen’s low name recognition, which people familiar with the data say has been evident in Republican and Democratic private polling.

Cory McCray, a state senator from Baltimore who is also the first vice chair of the state Democratic Party, said he believed a Hogan-Van Hollen race “would be pretty competitive,” citing the governor’s popularity with Democrats as well as Republicans.

“A governor is probably more well-known than a senator … and I would assume Senator Van Hollen is aware of that as well,” McCray said, adding, “Hogan is definitely a formidable opponent, but if there’s anybody who can keep that seat, it’s Chris Van Hollen.”

Van Hollen, who declined an interview request, is a political veteran. A former chair of both the Democrats’ House and Senate campaign arms, he at home diligently climbed the ranks in Maryland politics from his home base just over the border from Washington, DC, starting with the house of delegates, then the state senate, then the US House, then winning his first Senate term in 2018.

Navigating GOP politics as a Trump critic

But there’s no guarantee Hogan would even make it to the general election.

A frequent Trump critic, he toyed with the idea of challenging the then-President in the 2020 Republican primary, before announcing in late 2019 that he would not.

Hogan said shortly after the second impeachment trial ended that he would have been a vote to convict the former President in the Senate, among many other complaints over the years.

In the Biden era, Hogan has positioned himself as a vocal leader of the winnowing list of anti-Trump Republican politicians. He supported the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and after Trump said he hoped for primary challenges to the 13 House Republicans who supported it, Hogan spoke out in their defense.

“There’s people very, very disgusted with our governor in our area,” said Ric Metzgar, a Republican state representative from Baltimore County. “In my area, it’s no secret that it’s Trump territory. In some precincts down here, 98% of the people voted for him. … I really believe that conservative people are really upset that (Hogan) pulled away from Trump.”

But the allure of having the sole Republican candidate anyone thinks could be competitive in Maryland is enough to soothe some complaints. Minutes after complaining that Hogan “loves the TV camera,” Metzgar called back with a statement of support: “Governor Hogan has run statewide twice and won very strongly, and it would be great to have a Republican in the Senate from Maryland.”

Kathy Szeliga, the Republican state representative who lost to Van Hollen by 25 points in 2016, said she thought others would come to that conclusion as well. “I think Republican primary voters in Maryland are sophisticated enough to know that President Trump did not do well in Maryland,” she said.

Trump-embracing national Republicans are ready to be forgiving as well. “More Republicans in the Senate would be a good thing,” said American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp, while adding, “I’d like to know his takes on the [Build Back Better Act], nationalizing voting, [Supreme Court Justices Brett] Kavanaugh and [Amy Coney] Barrett.”

Hogan’s relatively stringent Covid-19 response has gotten high marks from many, but not from Schlapp, who was frustrated that his own Conservative Political Action Conference had to move from its traditional spot in Maryland’s National Harbor because of state health restrictions. In Florida, where CPAC has relocated, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis instituted far fewer Covid-related restrictions.

“I’d like to know where he is on national issues,” Schlapp said. “We have had to move two CPACs because he was not exactly Ron DeSantis on the virus.”

Hogan is once again toying with the idea of a presidential run, which a Senate bid could either boost or complicate. If he won in 2022, he could turn around and immediately launch a 2024 campaign — or it could give him a spot to wait out a potential Trump return until 2028. But by then, Hogan, who has survived non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, would be in his early 70s. And were he to lose to Van Hollen next year, he’d have a much harder time following that up with a strong presidential run.

National Republicans have been trying to keep their Hogan courtship quiet, blest he become the latest recruit scared out of running by the party’s Trumpist turn and the attacks Democrats are preparing.

The GOP governors of Arizona, Vermont and New Hampshire and the former governor of Nevada, all moderates, were all seen as potential strong Republican Senate candidates for 2022, but all passed on running — most embarrassingly for the party, when New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu announced he was instead running for another term for governor last month.

‘I don’t think Maryland’s seen one like this before’

Though Van Hollen’s campaign wouldn’t detail how extensive its staff and operations are so far, campaign operative Keith Presley said, “Our campaign is totally prepared for whoever runs. Senator Van Hollen is busy working to get results for the people of Maryland and to protect our democracy.” And he does have a head start on fundraising: at the end of the last quarter, he had almost $4 million on hand.

National Democrats, meanwhile, are warning that if Hogan got in, they’d try to undermine his maverick brand and make him out to be just another McConnell pawn.

“If he does run, all he’ll do is join the 40-year long history of Republicans losing statewide federal elections in Maryland,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Sid Saab, a Republican state representative from Anne Arundel county, doubts Hogan will jump in, but he’s holding out hope.

“It would be easy for him to put up a campaign quickly,” Saab said. “He can ramp up pretty quick, and I think he would obviously win the primary, even though there’s some Republicans who are not happy with him.”

McCray, the Democratic state senator, summed up the feelings that many in the state — Democrat and Republican — have about a Hogan-Van Hollen race: “I don’t think Maryland’s seen one like this before.”

And even Republicans loyal to the former President aren’t rejecting a Hogan candidacy outright. Asked about the prospect of Hogan running, even as a Republican opposed to Trump, former Trump communications director Jason Miller said he was ready to be enthusiastic.

“Everything is in play for 2022,” Miller said. “Everything.”

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