Hochul's FY24 health care budget emphasizes Medicaid … – Crain's New York Business

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s record-high state budget for fiscal year 2024 includes more than $104 billion in state and federal funding for health care, with plans emphasizing investment in Medicaid, mental health care and long-term care.
The budget, announced on Wednesday, includes $88 billion for Medicaid, with $35 billion from the state and $53 billion from the federal government. The investment is a move to widen access to care for underserved New Yorkers
Hochul has proposed that the state-funded portion of the program include a 5% reimbursement rate increase for hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living providers, with a total state investment of $379 million. The Medicaid proposals also include expanding primary care and preventative services, reimbursement rate increases for primary care providers, and increased coverage of primary and urgent care within the shelter system.
Hochul also assigned dollar amounts to her $1 billion in mental health initiative announced during her State of the State address in January. Those include $890 million for a total of 3,500 new units for people with mental health conditions throughout the state, $60 million for 12 new comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs and expanded outpatient services, and $18 million for 150 state-operated inpatient psychiatric beds.
Advocates have expressed cautious optimism about the plan, applauding Hochul’s potential investments but warning that services need to remain voluntary.
The budget’s other proposals include investments in long-term care support, financial incentives for health care workers, and reproductive care protection. The state will receive about $15 billion from the federal government for health care programs administered by the state Department of Health and other agencies.
To bolster long-term care for more New Yorkers, the budget book includes $7.2 million for respite services for families, $2.1 million for fiscal 2024 for care teams to provide care for low income adults in their homes, quality reporting and accreditation for assisted living residences and quality improvement initiatives.
Additionally, the budget could permit area agencies on aging to serve more people by allowing those with higher incomes to pay for certain services, which will be reinvested, ultimately shrinking waiting lists.
On the workforce side, the budget proposes a 2.5% cost of living adjustment for not-for-profits who provide services on behalf of health and human services agencies. For Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program workers who work with New Yorkers with disabilities, meanwhile, Hochul proposed replacing wage parity with subsidies so they can purchase insurance through NY State of Health. (Disability service providers asked for an 8.4% COLA for direct-support professionals.)
Hochul also proposed increasing reimbursement rates for reproductive health providers, implementing over-the-counter contraception access, safeguarding abortion access, and expanding abortion provider capacity within the state.
The budget acknowledges that New York’s hospitals have been struggling. Providers expressed concerns throughout last year about rising costs of caring for patients, a potential 340B drug program carve-out, and a workforce shortage.
Since 2020, the portion of hospitals that need state support is up more than 200%. Subsidies have increased almost 300%, and the ability to provide such support is unsustainable, according to Hochul.
Thus, the budget prioritizes building a comprehensive strategy for health care statewide, addressing New Yorkers’ most pressing health needs and focusing on underserved communities, establishing a disease surveillance and response system, and creating a plan to sustainably help struggling hospitals.
In terms of capital funding, Hochul proposed a total of $1 billion for health care transformation: $500M for financing capital improvements for eligible health care providers, improving health care delivery, and $500M for finance information tech improvement across the state.
Her budget also includes a $1.7 billion investment in the Wadsworth Center Laboratories, $750 of which was already part of the fiscal 2018 budget. This investment in the Albany public research laboratory, which would support costs for both phases of construction of a new lab, follows a year of investments in the life science sector that aim to increase job opportunities and make New York a life science hub.
The state Legislature will vote on Hochul’s proposed budget by April. —Jacqueline Neber
SUNY Downstate and Maimonides Health have forged a hematology-oncology partnership that aims to increase access to cancer care for underserved communities in Brooklyn, the organizations announced Thursday.
Through the collaboration, patients can access specialists, facilities and therapies at both SUNY Downstate and Maimonides. SUNY Downstate will share its resident physician workforce with Maimonides, according to the agreement.
The partnership follows previous collaborations between the two institutions in neurology and pathology. The hematology-oncology partnership will begin taking patients today, the health systems said.
SUNY Downstate and Maimonides are aiming to expand cancer care to residents of East Flatbush and the surrounding areas, which are home to around 133,000 people. The majority of residents are people of color and are disproportionately low-income or uninsured.
The collaboration expands cancer services in Brooklyn, reducing the need for patients to travel to obtain care. Currently there are some cancers that SUNY Downstate is unable to treat, including some that require complex chemotherapy regimens. Rather than send patients to Manhattan to receive complex care, the partnership will allow patients to access treatment in the borough where they live, the organizations said.
Additionally, the collaboration aims to improve cancer screenings, as preventive care including mammograms and colonoscopies has plummeted during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Dr. Wayne Riley, president of SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.
“We know that Black and brown communities, or communities of low socioeconomic status, tend to have worse outcomes with their cancer because it’s discovered later,” Riley said. “Screening is a critically important aspect of this new relationship.”
Ken Gibbs, chief executive of Maimonides Health, said the hematology-oncology partnership will be a “central access point for diagnosis of cancers,” adding that the partnership will target high-incidence cancers in central Brooklyn, such as breast cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer. It also will offer combined resources to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, which are diagnosed in 14 per 100,000 people each year in the East Flatbush area, according to the New York Cancer Registry.
In the next year, Riley said, the collaboration could expand the number of cancer patients that SUNY Downstate treats by as much as 10%.
University Hospital at SUNY Downstate operates 342 beds. Maimonides Health, Brooklyn’s largest health system, serves more than 300,000 patients across its three hospitals and 80 community-based practices and clinics. —Amanda D’Ambrosio
Feb. 2, 2022: A previous version of this story stated that SUNY Downstate was the only academic medical center in Brooklyn. It is one academic medical center in the borough.
New York City Health + Hospitals/Kings County has launched a new neuroscience center at 451 Clarkson Avenue in Flatbush, the hospital announced Wednesday.
The Brooklyn Neuroscience Center, which opened Monday, treats adult and pediatric patients with brain, spine, and peripheral nervous system disorders. Patients can access inpatient and outpatient services for adult neurology issues, as well as services for epilepsy, stroke recovery, neurocritical care, neuroradiology and rehabilitative medicine.
According to Dr. Helen Valsamis, H+H/Kings County’s chief of neurology and co-director of the center, the new facility was born out of a concentrated effort to bring more neuroscience services to Brooklyn, where the community needs them, and add to the hospital’s specialty neuroscience services. The center consolidates outpatient practices in four locations into one spot.
Patients who come in for general neurology but need more specialized services for epilepsy, for example, can access any level of care they need at the center, she said. She added that the center will have outpatient nurse practitioners to help provide complex care and then follow-up services.
The center will also run a neuro consult service where physicians can provide neurology consultations and support to patients on different floors of the hospital, she added.
Through its neuro services, H+H/Kings County is projected to see more than 6,000 outpatient patients per year and more than 400 inpatient admissions annually, she said, with the consultation service seeing about 300 patients per month.
H+H/Kings County is one of 11 H+H sites and is the primary teaching affiliate for SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University. —J.N.
In an effort to address the diabetes epidemic, the City Council on Wednesday heard a bill that would require chain restaurants in the city to display a sugar warning on menus next to all items that exceed the FDA’s daily recommended value.
The legislation was introduced by Manhattan councilmember Keith Powers, and is an expansion of an earlier campaign to add sugar warnings to pre-packaged foods and beverages, which was put forward by ex-councilmember, current Manhattan borough president Mark Levine and was signed into law in December 2021. The chains face fines between $200 and $500 if they don’t comply.
The bill dubbed the “Sweet Truth Act,” would require chain restaurants—those with more than 15 locations citywide—to place a warning next to menu items that have more than 50g of added sugar. The bill would also require that restaurants develop a report every three months detailing the amount of sugar and sodium in each menu item.
“Just as we have been accustomed to seeing calories and other nutritional information when we are ordering food, it can and it should become the norm for us to see the level of added sugar we are consuming to better regulate our intake,” said Powers during the hearing. “Just one beverage contains more than a recommended amount of added sugar for an entire day and many times we don’t even know what’s in it. We don’t know how much sugar is in it.”
More than 773,000 New Yorkers have diabetes, according to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Powers wants to advance the “Sweet Truth” bill as soon as possible It currently has support from the Adams administration and is co-sponsored by 36 council members. —Olivia Bensimon
NEW REPORTER: Amanda D’Ambrosio has joined the Health Pulse team to cover New York’s city and state health care developments. D’Ambrosio comes from MedPage Today, where she was an enterprise and investigative reporter. She graduated from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in 2019.
EXPANSION SUPPORT: The Bergen New Bridge Medical Center Foundation has pledged to support the Bergen New Bridge Medical Center through a $1 million donation, the medical center announced Wednesday. The support will fund the center’s expansion, services and programming. Bergen New Bridge is based in Paramus, N.J.
PSYCHIATRY RESIDENCY: In July, St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers will begin training psychiatry residents through a newly-accredited residency program, St. Joseph’s announced Wednesday. The medical center’s two campuses have a total of 322 inpatient beds and offer specialized geriatric and adolescent care, substance use rehabilitation programs and outpatient programs.
WHO’S NEWS: The “Who’s News” portion of “At a Glance” is available online at this link and in the Health Pulse newsletter. “Who’s News” is a daily update of career transitions in the local health care industry. For more information on submitting a listing, reach out to Debora Stein: [email protected].
CONTACT US: Have a tip about news happening in the local health care industry? Want to provide feedback about our coverage? Contact the Health Pulse team at [email protected]
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