Greater than 400 nurses on the Brooklyn Hospital Middle, the place officers warned of a dire monetary gap, have been minimize off from medical insurance protection for six weeks, in keeping with their union.
Gov. Kathy Hochul offered $15 million in emergency state support just lately to the financially strapped 181-year-old neighborhood hospital that borders Fort Greene Park, a number of sources advised THE CITY. Hospital officers requested $160 million final fall, and the $15 million just isn’t sufficient to revive well being advantages for the nurses, in keeping with the New York State Nurses Affiliation.
Officers with the nurses union advised THE CITY that staff really feel focused by hospital directors’ determination to not pay into their well being care fund. Nurses are the one hospital workers with out protection; medical doctors, administrative workers and different staff have been unaffected.
“You selected the nurses, the one group of individuals that truly present up — rain, solar, sleet, snow,” mentioned Rehana Lowtan, a nurse educator who started her profession on the hospital 20 years in the past. “We have now nurses right here which have severe medical situations. They’ve households which can be on their plans that don’t have entry to any type of care proper now.”
The nurses who spoke to THE CITY mentioned they have no idea when, or if, protection shall be reinstated.
“There’s no communication,” mentioned Yvette Byer-Henry, a licensed nurse midwife who has labored on the hospital for 25 years. “It simply reeks.”
A spokesperson for the hospital, Zachary Fink, mentioned the power is “working carefully with NYSNA and the Hochul administration on an answer.”
“The Brooklyn Hospital Middle values our NYSNA represented nurses and acknowledges that medical advantages are a vital a part of supporting our colleagues and their households. The fast subject is securing the funds essential to proceed overlaying these medical advantages,” he mentioned in an announcement.
The hospital has requested further cash from the state on high of the $74 million it acquired in 2025. The plea for assist comes as the power considers chapter, the hospital’s chief government Gary G. Terranoni, advised Spectrum Information in November.
Invoice Hammond, a senior fellow for well being coverage on the Albany-based assume tank the Empire Middle, referred to as the hospital’s failure to pay nurses’ advantages “a transfer of desperation” that would present the governor it wants the requested support.
“That may talk to the state we’re in serious trouble, and it might flip the nurses into your allies for pushing the state for cash,” he mentioned. “If that’s their technique that will be utilizing them as a bargaining chip.”
The State and the Security Web
Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest (D-Brooklyn), mentioned the truth of security web hospitals necessitates state support, explaining that Medicaid reimburses the hospital beneath the price of its care.
“The reimbursement charges will not be on par with the care that’s being given,” she mentioned.
“In the end, the accountability rests with the state that hospitals like Brooklyn Hospital Middle must be made complete,” added Souffrant Forrest, who has labored as a nurse. “Sadly, the governor is trickling in funding. She did make the selection to not embody will increase in security web funding general in final yr’s finances.”
Hochul’s workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Brooklyn Hospital Middle’s nurses averted a strike in January by coming to a tentative settlement on a labor contract with administration. The phrases included the hospital absolutely offering the nurses’ well being care and pension advantages.
The nurses, who mentioned they had been unaware that the hospital had not paid the advantages fund since November, accepted the contract. They’re now legally prohibited from placing because of the contract settlement.
“If they’re in a monetary disaster, [hospital officials] shouldn’t be making guarantees they’ll’t preserve,” Hammond mentioned.
Byer-Henry advised THE CITY the hospital has didn’t make month-to-month funds to the profit fund up to now, however that is the primary time nurses have misplaced well being care.
“Once you made the choice to not pay one portion of your workers’ profit, what was your pondering going ahead?” Byer-Henry mentioned. “As a result of you possibly can’t run a hospital with out nurses — nurses are the spine of the hospital.”
Brooklyn Hospital Middle is a security web hospital and isn’t affiliated with giant suppliers resembling Mount Sinai Well being System or Northwell Well being.
As a substitute, its main supply of earnings is from its sufferers. About 80% are coated by Medicaid and Medicare, the place the hospital receives its reimbursement and funding, in keeping with a latest report from the Healthcare Affiliation of New York State.
President Donald Trump’s latest cuts to Medicaid have damage security web establishments like Brooklyn Hospital.
In response to Hammond, the request for state support additionally factors to a broader subject of hospitals counting on the state for emergency bailouts, reasonably than having long-term plans to unravel their fiscal issues.
“That makes it extra possible that hospitals will get in monetary hassle sooner or later as a result of they’ve an affordable expectation they’ll squeeze cash out of the state,” he mentioned.
The nurses at Brooklyn Hospital Middle at present face what Hammond referred to as, “a really painful irony” — confronting the well being care system on daily basis without having protection for medical care themselves.
Byer-Henry mentioned she continues to indicate up on the hospital to work, regardless of the modifications in her insurance coverage. She beforehand thought her husband’s insurance coverage would cowl her, however came upon on Wednesday it might not.
“I do it as a result of I like my sufferers,” she mentioned. “Numerous my sufferers don’t wish to see anybody else.”
