State lawmakers propose keeping SUNY Downstate hospital open
After Gov. Hochul’s budget blueprint included a proposal to close a central Brooklyn hospital, state lawmakers have released plans to keep the medical center open.
Budgetary proposals released by the state Senate and Assembly would preserve access to the 342-bed medical center, University Hospital at Downstate, which is located in the predominantly Black neighborhood of East Flatbush.
Community members and the neighborhood’s representatives in the Senate and Assembly have pushed back hard against the Hochul administration’s plan, which would close the Downstate Hospital and move some of its services across the street.
The Assembly proposal includes language safeguarding the future of the Downstate Hospital, according to the office of Speaker Carl Heastie.
The blueprint would create a commission tasked with studying how to preserve the long-term health of the hospital and would place $300 million in a “lock box” for the medical center’s future expenses, said the local assemblyman, Brian Cunningham.
The panel would determine how to spend the $300 million, and whether more money would be needed, Cunningham said. The legislative plan would also provide $200 million to cover the hospital’s debt over two years, according to the assemblyman’s office.
“When the next pandemic occurs, we want Downstate to be in central Brooklyn — and be stronger and more resilient and more vibrant,” Cunningham, a Democrat, said by phone Tuesday.
More than 70% of residents who live near the hospital oppose efforts to close the medical center and move some of its services, according to a poll published this month by labor interests that have lined up against the plan.
Central Brooklyn has a shortage of quality health care options. A January state Health Department report said hospital quality is “generally low across Brooklyn and is lowest in communities with a large proportion of Black residents.”
The Downstate Hospital houses the lone kidney transplant program in Brooklyn and one of two high-level perinatal care centers in the borough, according to the office of the local state senator, Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat.
“I’m pleased the Senate budget rejects the ill-conceived and harmful plan to close SUNY Downstate,” Myrie said in a statement Tuesday. “Instead, we are keeping current Downstate services operational, directing needed capital and operating support to Downstate, and developing a real assessment of health care needs in central Brooklyn.”
A spokeswoman for the state university system, Katie Blitz, said in a statement this month that SUNY has “heard from hundreds of community members about their concerns and aspirations around Downstate, and are working with the community to come up with a plan that will save this gem.”
The governor and lawmakers in Albany face an April 1 deadline to reach an agreement on the next state budget.
