Struggling Brooklyn Hospital Trims Service

As two large Brooklyn hospitals get closer to shutting their doors for good, another one is closing a large family care clinic in a cost-saving move.

Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, in Bushwick, says its LaMarca Family Health Center is losing $2.5 million a year. The hospital last year had a surplus of $3.8 million last year, after years of multimillion-dollar deficits. But Chief Executive Ramon Rodriguez told WNYC that it will again be a struggle to break even this year and in 2014 due to lower Medicaid reimbursement rates.

"If [federal] Affordable Care Act reductions continue, we're looking at $4.2 million decline in revenue in 2014," he said. "So we need to find a way to reduce our overall expense by that much."

Years of mounting debts and declining payments from state and federal governments have challenged hospitals across the region. Interfaith Medical Center in Bedford-Stuyvesant has been in bankruptcy court since December and will begin shutting down in two weeks. SUNY Downstate Medical Center has been trying to close Long Island College Hospital since the spring. Legal challenges so far have kept it open, but there are currently only nine patients left.

Rodriguez said Wyckoff Heights currently has about 30 days cash-in-hand to pay staff members—a margin he said the hospital is trying to increase. Health care experts say that buffer is not unusual for a facility like Wyckoff, but barely sufficient to run a financially viable operation.

"Brooklyn hospitals are cash-strapped, so that's not surprising," said Dr. Fred Hyde, a hospital consultant and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "Upstate hospitals typically have enough reserves for 60 days, and AA-rated hospitals would have between 150 and 200 days worth."

Critics of Rodriguez have said if he is interested in cutting expenses, he should consider his own salary, which is approximately $875,000. Rodriguez said he is not contemplating such a move.

"I feel very lucky to get paid all that money, and I'm humbled by it," he said. "I run a $300 million operation that when I walked in the door, it was going to be closed, was within days of being bankrupt. And the last time I looked, when someone is brought into a distressed hospital like this, he makes a lot more money than I ever made.

In his 18-month tenure, Rodriguez has overseen the layoffs of about 175 people at Wyckoff. He said many of those at the LaMarca clinic would find work elsewhere at the hospital.

LaMarca only sees between 20 and 30 patients a day. Wyckoff will be leasing the satellite clinic to a private physicians group, and Ramon said visits are projected to increase dramatically, with many of those patients continuing to use Wyckoff for specialty care and major procedures.

The new physicians practice will take over the clinic day after LaMarca closes as a Wyckoff operation, on Sept. 3.