A community advisory board is recommending that the state invest nearly $1 billion to modernize Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate Hospital, expand the emergency department and build a new ambulatory surgery center on the campus, rather than closing the medical center as originally planned.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature established the nine-person advisory board on Downstate’s future last year after Hochul faced backlash over an initial plan to replace the medical center with an outpatient clinic.
“Central Brooklyn deserves world-class health care, and with this historic $1 billion investment, we’re securing a brighter, healthier future for SUNY Downstate and the communities it serves,” Hochul said of the advisory board’s recommendations Thursday.
Hochul is still going over the details of the plan and said she looks forward to “thoroughly reviewing” it. But SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. said he anticipates it moving forward and is hopeful that renovations can get underway next year. ” it.
City and state elected officials who had protested the closure celebrated the proposed investment in Downstate.
The advisory board is recommending that SUNY Downstate reduce its number of beds from 342 to 225 and convert all of them to private rooms with showers. According to the board, the hospital currently has an average of 165 beds filled each day, and the proposal would aim to expand, rather than reduce, the current level of inpatient care.
The board also wants Downstate to use the new ambulatory surgery annex to provide more oncology and cardiology services.
King previously endorsed Hochul’s closure plan for Downstate, pointing to annual operating losses of about $100 million per year and an aging building. But he said Thursday he believes the proposed new investments will help turn the hospital’s finances around.
“We are very optimistic,” King said. “The investments will allow us to renovate the hospital in a way that will make it a much more attractive place for patients to be.”
Still, King said there was other work to do to improve hospital operations, such as updating the facility’s electronic medical records.
Other SUNY leaders cautiously celebrated the proposal.
“Along with celebrating these exciting investments (which the advisory board believes will yield higher patient volume, including new commercial payers), we must simultaneously and dramatically intensify our efforts to advance efficiency in order to reduce unsustainable annual deficits,” Wayne Riley, the president of Downstate Health Sciences University, and Patricia Winston, the Interim CEO of Downstate University Hospital, wrote in a letter to faculty and staff Thursday, which was reviewed by Gothamist.
The advisory board issued its recommendations after holding four public hearings designed to garner input from the community. The initial plan faced criticism for being announced without community input, and then presented before invite-only focus groups.
