Edited by: TJVNews.com
In terms of finding the highest quality healthcare in Brooklyn, at one time, the hospital that was known for offering superlative services was Maimonides Hospital. Located in the heart of Borough Park and serving surrounding communities as well, it appears that the hospital has taken a tragic nosedive.
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 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.
The upshot of the story is that the top administrators and physicians, including its CEO are raking in seven-figure salaries when the hospital is having trouble staying afloat, the Post has reported.
The report indicated 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.
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.
A Maimonides spokesperson said that the hospital was paying these gargantuan salaries and benefits packages to top administrators and physicians even though they were experiencing “depressed inpatient and outpatient volume as well as increased costs, resulting in a net loss of $64.6 million through Q2 2021, and an operating budget projection of a $19.5 million loss for 2022, “ according to the Post report.
Records from the state show that the number of patients who were treated and discharged at Maimonides decreased from 35,000 in 2019 to 30,000 in 2020, as was reported by the Post.
The Maimonides spokesperson told the post that the hospital is “committed to serving those in need during these trying and unpredictable times.”
The stark reality is that the level of patient care and services has drastically declined. The union representing nurses told the Post that the Maimonides birthing unit is severely understaffed, and patients are not given the proper care.
Maimonides baby unit nurse Michelle Williams told the Post, “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.”
She added: “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.”
Last week a protest rally was held outside Maimonides by the New York State Nurses Association, as was reported by the Post. The organization accused the hospital of dangerous understaffing.
Sources in the Borough Park area told the Post that due to the inferior care provided by Maimonides “more residents with means are now going for planned surgeries to hospitals in Manhattan rather than Maimonides.” And the number of patients that the hospital is losing is growing each day.
In the most recent federal government report card for patient satisfaction, the Post reported that Maimonides received only a 1 star rating out of 5 and 2 out of 5 for overall care.
For its part, the hospital defended the level of compensation that its top brass received while the hospital was losing money and patients. The Post reported that a hospital spokesperson said that the salary that CEO Gibbs received was equitable and “insisted the massive jump was the result of a reporting requirement and said his salary is “on par with counterparts” and is “well below” top dogs at the city’s largest public hospitals.”
The spokesperson added that: “Ken’s salary did not increase from 2019 to 2020; the increase in compensation reported on the 2020 Form 990 reflects a one-time payment pursuant to the terms of a supplemental executive retirement plan that occurred due to his vesting in the plan after five years of employment.”
The spokesperson also emphasized that Gibbs was working at the hospital in a hands-on way during the height of the Covid pandemic and was not absent from his post. The representative told the Post that Gibbs’ main address is Central Park West in Manhattan.
The Maimonides representative told the Post concerning Gibbs: “Ken voted via absentee ballot based on his secondary address in Old Chatham but has lived in New York City and worked at the hospital throughout the pandemic, including seven days a week during the height of the spring 2020 surge.”
But a Post source said that the Maimonides CEO “voted from his second address to help Democrat Antonio Delgado get elected to Congress in the Hudson Valley region.”
The Jewish Voice made repeated attempts to contact hospital spokespeople for comments. When reached by the Jewish Voice, Heshy Augenbaum, Chief Development Officer at Maimonides said that he did not have any information about salary hikes and refused to answer questions pertaining to the Post report. Instead, the told the Jewish Voice to speak with someone in the hospital marketing department.
Paying out seven-figure salaries for top physicians during a financial crisis was defended by the hospital as they said it is “one of the top-rated heart and vascular care centers in the nation,” according to the Post report.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a local Borough Park resident who had sought treatment at Maimonides on a number of occasions throughout the last decade told the Jewish Voice: “I can tell you that the level of care at the hospital has really gone down the drain in every way. It seems like the medical staff, nurses and administrators just don’t care if patients live or die. People are rude, the care is shoddy and I personally had even worse medical issues after I was released.”
