LICH losing money at "excessive rate," says top state official

LICH losing money at "excessive rate," says top state official

A top state official in charge of deciding the fate of Long Island College Hospital sees it as a money loser many locals don’t use.

SUNY Chairman Carl McCall suggested LICH is sucking the life out of SUNY Downstate Medical Center which it’s part of â€" and Downstate could run out of money as soon as March.

“There’s urgency to take action to prevent insolvency,” McCall said in his first interview since news broke last week that LICH in Cobble Hill faces a possible closing. “We need to act quickly.”

The Hicks St. hospital has “lost money consistently” â€" and “there was doubt about whether the acquisition should have been made in the first place,” McCall said. “It seemed not to have been a sound acquisition.”

SUNY trustees are expected to vote in less than a month on whether to close LICH which he said “has continued to lose money at an excessive rate” even after SUNY Downstate’s [2011] purchase of it.

“My assumption is SUNY Downstate management tried to improve LICH finances,” he said. “But there seems to be a tendency for people in the neighborhood to go elsewhere for their healthcare.”

Local advocates are beginning to believe the entire hospital will likely not survive â€" and scrambling to figure out which medical services they should push to keep.

“There has to be a presence of some level of health care,” said one source. “People are trying to figure out what (that is).”

Another source said locals hope to keep the emergency room open, plus a small number of beds to treat sick people from nearby Cobble Hill Nursing Home.

“It feels like LICH in its present form is gone,” the source said, adding that new residents moving to Brownstone Brooklyn from Manahttan often stick with their Manhattan doctors and hospitals.

McCall said SUNY trusteesf LICH is under considera

The board has already advanced $ 75 million to shore up Downstate’s finances, McCall said. “We don’t have any more money,” he said. “We’ve got to do something.”

Downstate’s 2012 losses could top $ 200 million â€" and LICH is a major cause of the mess with 17 straight years in the red, an audit by state Controller Thomas DiNapoli’s office revealed.

With LICH and Downstate’s East Flatbush facility both losing money, trustees will try to rescue the latter because they see it as an important teaching hospital.

“The evidence being presented to the board against LICH is so negative that they would likely feel they have to vote to close LICH or they’d look irresponsible,” the source said.

Staffers at 2,200-employee LICH are in an uproar about the threatened shutdown.

“It would do irreparable harm to the community,” said chief medical officer Dr. Marwan Atallah.

“We haven’t had a raise in four years,” said linens department worker Willie Bell. “All of us do two or three jobs. I don’t mind that, but this ain’t fair.”

lcroghan@nydailynews.com