New York City officials say a funding dispute with Albany may force them to reduce services and freeze hiring and are filing a lawsuit over the matter.
At the heart of the squabble is $380 million earmarked to reimburse New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation for services dating back to 2013. Typically, the state receives the money from the federal government and disburses it to the city on a rolling basis. However, the State Budget Office now says it won't hand over the money because of a series of federal budget cuts that went into effect on Oct. 1.
However, that's left Health+Hospitals with just enough cashflow to last the agency a little longer than two weeks. Now, the city's already-cash-strapped public hospitals could be forced to leave critical jobs empty.
"It is definitely conceivable that some physician positions will not be filled," Health+Hospitals' Interim President and CEO Stanley Brezenoff said.
Brezenoff says the agency only learned that it wouldn't be getting the money last week. But Governor Andrew Cuomo's office says the federal cuts have been a long time coming, and Health+Hospitals should have been ready.
"We know the city prefers political theater to governing, but a more productive action would be to sue the federal government since they are making these devastating cuts, or if it actually cared about patient care, to use its funds to improve the hospital network that it owns," Press Secretary Dani Lever said.
State Medicaid Director Jason Helgerson said his office won't make any decision on when and how much of the funding will be disbursed for months. Meanwhile, the Health & Hospitals Corporation has already started slowing down its payments to vendors.
"That has implications both for the services and supplies in the hospitals, but also in terms of how much those vendors will charge the city for services and supplies in the future," Jillian Jorgensen, city hall bureau chief for the Daily News, told WNYC.
For more, listen to Jorgensen's conversation with WNYC's Sean Carlson.