CEO confident hospital can be saved

Westchester County Business Journal, Feb 26, 2007 by Philippidis, Alex

A meeting with state health officials earlier this month has left the president and chief executive officer of Community Hospital at Dobbs Ferry more hopeful than ever that the healthcare provider can survive the death sentence recommended for it by the Berger Commission.

"It was a very good meeting. We're going to be following up with them in another week or so," said Jim Foy, who is also president and chief executive officer with Community Hospitals parent organization Riverside Health Care System Inc. of Yonkers.

"There was a reasonableness on their side, It gives me some cause for optimism," Foy added. "There are substantive discussions and their attitude seems to be very positive. We're going to have to follow up with them a couple of times. I can't really say more than that right now."

He would not discuss details of the talks, including what progress was made on unresolved questions, including: Which programs will remain operating at Dobbs Ferry? And what will happen to the hospital's 50 inpatient beds?

Community Hospital was among nine health-care providers recommended for permanent shutdown by the Commission on Healthcare in the 21st Century, a state panel nicknamed the Berger Commission for its chairman Stephen Berger. Gov. Eliot Spitzer initially said he would support the recommendations of the 18-member commission, created by his predecessor George E. Pataki.

But addressing 30 Business Council of Westchester members in Albany for the group's annual state lobbying trip on Feb. 13, a top Spitzer health official held out hope that Community Hospital could be kept open as an ambulatorycare or subemergency-care center.

"If an urgent-care center (and) ambulatory-care center are appropriate and necessary, and the hospital could make the case, which it seems like it could, it seems to me to be doable," said Joe Baker, assistant deputy secretary for health and human services.

HOSPITAL IS PROFITABLE

Baker spoke three days before he and health officials met with Foy and two concerned lawmakers who called for the meeting, state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (DYonkers) and state Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens).

Riverside has argued Community Hospital should stay open because it operates in the black and its profits are essential to subsidizing operations at Riverside flagship St. John's Riverside Hospital in Yonkers. According to Riverside, Community Hospital finished last year with a $625,000 profit and a 3 percent operating margin.

The Berger commission contended the Dobbs Ferry hospital should be closed since it provided little care to poor and other vulnerable patients, had what it considered extremely low utilization and made only a small contribution to the region's economy.

" Community Hospital at Dobbs Ferry is a prime example of excess capacity, which the commission was charged to eliminate," the Berger commission concluded.

If Riverside and the state can agree on a plan to save Community Hospital, it would also end a lawsuit Riverside Healthcare System has filed against the state seeking to overturn the Berger recommendation. Riverside has argued the commission held "a secret, closed-door meeting" in violation of the state Open Meetings Law, and that the commission unconstitutionally took away Community Hospital's "property interests."

That lawsuit is one of a couple filed in hope of reversing the commission's findings. The group New York Lawyers in the Public Interest has also sued to block the closing of Community Hospital and eight other hospitals.

In addition to Community Hospital and St. John's Riverside, Riverside also oversees four Yonkers facilities: the Cochran School of Nursing, the Michael N. Malotz Skilled Nursing Pavilion, Park Central Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Valentine Lane Family Practice.