Friday, June 20, 2025
New York lawmakers have approved a $254 billion state budget package for fiscal year 2026, carrying several provisions affecting Nassau University Medical Center, including a state “takeover” of the hospital system.
The newly approved Nassau Health Care Corporation board structure, passed on May 7 by the legislature, shifts control away from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman to Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Democrats. The restructured board — overseeing NUMC in East Meadow and the A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale — will include 11 members, with a majority appointed by the governor, who will also designate the chair. The county executive will lose approval authority over the corporation’s chief executive.
Appointments to the board could be made as early as June.
The corporation has long faced scrutiny and accusations of financial mismanagement, despite the hospital system serving all patients, including the uninsured and undocumented, regardless of their ability to pay for medical care.
But significant financial improvements were reported in 2024, with the hospital system ending the fiscal year with nearly $80 million in its cash reserves, up from $28 million in December 2023. Additional financial reports showed that revenue increased by $6.2 million in November 2024, while operating expenses were down by $1.7 million, compared with 2023.
In late-April, the hospital’s current medical board strongly opposed the state’s plan before its approval last week, stating in a letter to Hochul and the state legislature, that the changes “strip the hospital of its autonomy and replace its leadership with political appointees,” according to a news release.
Dr. Irina Gelman, the current chair of the NHCC board, also rejected the state’s decision in a statement shared with the Herald on May 7.
“The state’s hostile takeover of Nassau County’s only public safety-net hospital is unprecedented, immoral and dangerous,” she said. “This disparate targeting of only NHCC and none of the other public benefit corporations in New York state, is indicative of the moral turpitude of Albany using the employees, patients and most vulnerable of Nassau County’s residents as political cannon fodder. By continuing to put politics, any politics left, right or center, before the needs of the people that work and seek care at Nassau Health Care Corporation is deplorable.”
Gelman also brought up a December 2020 study by Alvarez & Marsal, a management-consulting firm, outlining various models the hospital system could implement “to address NHCC’s precarious financial condition.” One of those models proposed “a continuing but minimal inpatient medical/surgical footprint with the full suite of current inpatient behavioral health services.”
The assessment added that “a second collocated behavioral health hospital (Article 31) license would be needed to provide inpatient psychiatric beds at current levels.”
“Both the state’s overreach of power, as well as the proposed 19 story behavioral/ health facility in the middle of Nassau County must be of critical concern to all Nassau County residents,” Gelman said, in reference to the proposed changes outlined in the 2020 study. “The notion that a state appointed board would have a higher rate of success in managing this critical care facility from Albany is a logical fallacy, given the abysmal record New York State has with their own SUNY hospital facilities.”
The legislation passed on May 7 also included provisions that allow the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, a public benefit corporation that assumed financial oversight of the hospital system in 2020, to impose additional control over NHCC. The hospital system filed litigation in December, accusing NIFA of gross negligence and abuses of power.
Additionally, the bill, which can be read on the state Senate’s website, calls for a study to look into “the modernization and revitalization of the Nassau Health Care Corporation.” It directs the NHCC to explore ways to strengthen NUMC and the A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility.
The study would examine health care delivery trends, the hospital’s financial history and projections, infrastructure and capital needs, community health disparities, available inpatient and outpatient services, regional service capacity, operational efficiency and care quality, and student training and job placement outcomes. The study should be completed and provided to NIFA no later than Dec. 1, 2026.
“If NUMC’s outgoing leadership had put half as much effort into fiscal management and patient care as they’ve put into politics and propaganda, the hospital wouldn’t be in crisis,” Gordon Tepper, the Long Island spokesman for Hochul said in an email to the Herald. “Their focus has never been on fixing NUMC; it’s been on protecting their own interests. What we are seeing now is a long-overdue intervention to protect patients and save the institution from those who failed it.”
Assemblyman John Mikulin, a Republican who represents parts of East Meadow, said in an emailed statement he voted “no” on the state budget.
“Unfortunately, this year’s state budget of $254 billion did not deliver for New Yorkers,” he said. “There were several policy decisions included in the FY2025-26 Enacted Budget I could not support, chief among them was the state takeover of the Nassau University Medical Center. NUMC plays a vital role in the Nassau County community and should remain under local control, not Hochul control.”
