Edited by: TJVNews.com
Last week, the Jewish Voice reported that top administrators and physicians at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Hospital were raking in seven-figures salaries as patient care was precipitously declining.
Several weeks ago, nurses employed at Maimonides (who also represent the New York State Nurses Association) staged a vehement protest at the hospital venue which called attention to the poor working conditions and the alleged subpar care given to patients.
According to their web site statement, members of the NYSNA said: “the RNs are confronted daily by a hospital overflowing with patients as a result of severe understaffing on L&D and Mother-Baby units, the ER and ICUs, as well as on Med-Surgical floors, Psychiatric and Perioperative care, and others.”
Registered nurse, Nancy Hagans who is the NYSNA President said: “As a safety net hospital, Maimonides plays a central role in the delivery of care to Brooklyn patients. But the hospital is understaffed on virtually every unit, impeding essential care to patients. As nurses, we are entrusted by law as patient advocates. We are duty-bound to call out Maimonides management to address RN staffing by hiring more nurses, to put in place effective retention policies and put the hospital on a path to ensuring quality care for all patients.”
The NYSNA’s statement also touched on the issue of perceived financial mismanagement. “The nurses support funding for safety net hospitals but believe those funds should be used to hire more nurses and protect patient care, not for hospital expansion or the hiring of consultants,” read the statement.
Kristen Curley, a registered nurse in the Stepdown/Telemetry unit said: “We do not have enough nurses to do the job — a job that has become extremely difficult, even dangerous at times. We work under a threat to patient safety.”
A Mother-Baby Unit registered nurse named Michelle Williams said: “With 4 couplets (mother and baby] I am able to provide care to both mother and baby. Unfortunately, on the night shift, I have a caseload of 6 couplets. That’s why I call the RN staffing ‘very poor’ in the unit. To care for all the mothers and babies we sometimes have to split the work. With couplets split up, I have ended up with as many as 15 babies assigned to me. This is wrong, because we run a risk of not getting all necessary care to the babies.”
As the Jewish Voice reported last week, in 2007, the New York Times reported that in an analysis of about 5,000 hospitals by the Department of Health and Human services, Maimonides was one of the 50 hospitals with the lowest mortality rates. In 2010, Maimonides received the HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence, ranking it among the top 5% of hospitals in the entire nation for overall quality outcomes. Maimonides was also listed among the top 5 individual hospitals in New York State for cardiology services, coronary interventional procedures, stroke treatment, and gastrointestinal medical services.
But that was then and this is now. According to a current report in the New York Post, Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn is losing tens of millions of dollars and is experiencing severe understaffing and numerous complaints have been registered about a significant decline in care that patients receive.
Maimonides is the largest hospital in Brooklyn and it delivers more babies than any hospital in the city.
In February 2013, Maimonides Hospital, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, and Montefiore Medical Center signed an affiliation agreement that made Maimonides a university hospital and the Brooklyn campus of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, according to a Wikipedia report.
In July 2021, Maimonides Medical Center announced an affiliation with New York Community Hospital, fully expanding a partnership that began with a clinical services agreement in 2018.
The Post reported that: “Maimonides’ CEO Kenneth Gibbs saw his compensation skyrocket from $1.8 million to $3.2 million from 2019 to 2020, when the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the facility, according to not-for-profit financial records filed with the IRS.”
Sources told the Post that Gibbs may not have even been at the hospital during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper reported that Gibbs “was recorded as voting absentee from his residence in Old Chatham, NY, in the upstate Berkshires in November 2020, not from his Central Park West apartment.”
In addition to Gibbs collecting a hefty salary during financially difficult times, the Post reported that in addition to the CEO, a number of high-ranking physicians also were making inflated salaries. They include Jacob Shani, chief of heart surgery, who received $3.5 million; Patrick Borgen, department of surgery, who received $2 million; Greg Ribakove, chair of cardiothoracic surgery who received $1.8 million; Robert Frankel, director of interventional cardiology who received $1.7 million; and Alex Shaknovich, cardiologist, who received $1.7 million, according to records obtained by the Post.
Moreover, what is most troubling is that information about malpractice and needless death lawsuits filed against Maimonides cannot be found. Medical industry experts have confirmed the fact that hospitals and private physicians are very often sued for malpractice which explains why their insurance policies that protect them from such litigation are exceptionally costly. Experts add that all hospitals at one time or another are subjected to lawsuits of this nature.
Having said this, other health professionals have engaged in serious speculation as to why no documentation of malpractice suits against Maimonides can be unearthed. Said one health professional, “The fact that we cannot see the public record of lawsuits initiated against Maimonides is a real problem. Many of my colleagues have wondered whether the top brass at Maimonides is exerting any political power with the New York City court system to keep these matters hushed up.”
The Jewish Voice has made repeated attempts to contact various officials at Maimonides including the president and the public relations staff for comments on this developing story. The Jewish Voice looks forward to engaging with Maimonides officials on the current state of affairs at the hospital and the critical matter of patient care.
