By James T. Mulder
The Post-Standard
SYRACUSE — Syracuse hospital CEOs predict emergency room patient waiting times will get longer and the overall availability and quality of care in their institutions will suffer if the state goes ahead with proposed cuts in Medicaid payments.
St. Joseph’s, Crouse, Community General and University Hospital would lose nearly $17 million over the next two years as a result of cuts proposed by Gov. David Paterson to help close the state’s growing budget deficit.
The four hospitals already are having trouble keeping up with growing demand for emergency care, according to Ron Lagoe of the Hospital Executive Council, a planning agency for the four hospitals. Ambulance volume at the four ERs has increased more than 22 percent over the past five years.
“We can’t turn people away, but it’s going to take more time to get care,” Lagoe said. “That’s going to be against a backdrop of an economic recession when people delay getting care because they don’t have money until they end up in the emergency department.”
Lagoe and CEOs of the four hospitals criticized the proposed cuts in an editorial board meeting Wednesday at The Post-Standard.
The CEOs said their hospitals already are being hurt by the financial meltdown.
Tom Quinn, of Community General, said hospitals will be required by federal law to come up with large sums of cash to make up for big stock market losses sustained by their defined benefit pension plans. At the same time, hospitals are anticipating declines in charitable giving they use to help pay for capital improvements, he said.
“There’s a lot of pressure on our fragile organizations already,” Quinn said.
Phillip S. Schaengold, of University Hospital, said instead of cutting Medicaid funding to hospitals, the state should ask the federal government to contribute more money to Medicaid, which helps pay for health care for the needy, aged, blind and disabled and low-income families with children.
“We are not crying wolf,” Schaengold said. “We are trying to raise the community’s consciousness that we are slowly becoming the only source of health care for the entire region.”
The proposed cuts are part of Paterson’s strategy to close a $1.5 billion hole in the state budget. That effort fell apart Tuesday when legislators refused to go along with his plan. Paterson said the inaction by lawmakers might result in the state being unable to pay some of its bills toward the end of the fiscal year.
Paterson proposed $2 billion in savings, much of which would come from hospitals and public schools.