January 28, 2025

More than 400 people attended the first public hearing held by the community advisory committee that will provide Gov. Kathy Hochul with a viable long-term plan to keep SUNY Downstate University Hospital open.

People at the Jan. 22 public hearing responded with cheers when the governor – via prerecorded video – told residents that the hospital is not going to close. Hochul asked for input on ways to improve the hospital, which has long been a victim of underfunding and was targeted by SUNY for closure as recently as last year.

Hochul, in her 2025-2026 Executive Budget, set aside $450 million in capital funding and $100 million in direct operating aid for Downstate hospital. That’s in addition to $300 million in capital funding and $100 million in operating aid in this year’s state budget. UUP has cautioned that more capital funding could be necessary for Downstate to meet needs the community has already identified and is likely to outline again at public hearings scheduled for Feb. 27 and in mid-March.

More than three dozen people—a mix of doctors, nurses, community residents, patients and neighbors—filled the hospital’s auditorium to air concerns, reiterate the importance of the hospital to the Central Brooklyn community and suggest changes and upgrades to improve the quality of care the facility provides.

They addressed members of the Downstate Community Advisory Board, who sat silently and listened as speaker after speaker offered suggestions. Most of the speakers ran well past the two minutes of time allotted to them and talked over the meeting moderator—a SUNY-hired consultant—and her assistant, who held a timer with an alarm that sounded when their time was up.

No shortage of concerns

Several speakers said they were frustrated with the process, which began when Gov. Hochul seated the board in November—seven months after announcing the plan to form an advisory committee. The board has met three times since; those meetings were closed to the public. The last of the board’s public hearings is scheduled mere weeks before the report is due to the governor.

“The process is wrong,” said Bishop Orlando Findlayter, pastor of Brooklyn’s New Hope Christian Fellowship and a steering committee member of Brooklyn for Downstate, a community coalition fighting to maintain and enhance the hospital. “How can you expect the professors to put into two minutes their decades of experience?

How can you write a report without sitting with the doctors and nurses?” Findlayter continued. “The hospital is in crisis because the state didn’t invest in Downstate…this is not how you treat SUNY Upstate. This is not how you treat Stony Brook. We will not accept your disrespect. You’re giving us crumbs.”

Downstate’s Dr. Samuel Marquez, a member of UUP’s statewide Executive Board, pointed out that the hospital was “an absolutely essential part” of the medical school, which serves as a pipeline of doctors and medical professionals to New York City.

“The loss of this hospital would greatly damage the quality and reputation of the medical school,” Marquez said. “You cannot have one without the other and expect this nationally respected medical school to continue attracting the top students that it does now.”

Speakers also talked about how frustrating it is to wait for hours in the ER; how nurses struggle to meet patients’ needs because they are short-staffed; and how outdated equipment and infrastructure put the hospital and its patients at a disadvantage compared to other hospitals in the city.

Suggestions included far-reaching approaches to reducing health inequities in the community the hospital serves. More than 90% of the hospital’s patients are either uninsured or insured by Medicaid.

Others were more tangible. A nurse, Cynthia Walker, said patients complain because showers and sinks don’t have hot water. Another hospital employee described an outdated, fragmented electronic medical record system that results in medical errors.

Maternal mortality issues

Walker and others urged the committee to dedicate money to hiring more nurses because it would reduce the risk to expectant parents and babies. A doula said embracing Black doulas and midwives would improve patient outcomes for Downstate’s obstetrical patients, who are predominately people of color.

Jeffrey Weiss, the president of the urology department, said he is worried about the high prevalence of prostate cancer in central Brooklyn and recommended updating the equipment for treating the disease at the hospital.

Other recommendations included: building a youth clinic and a clinic for LGBTQ+ patients, upgrading equipment used for treating gynecological cancers and research, and upgrading services for sickle cell disease and stroke.

Robert Foronjy, Downstate’s Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine who’s worked at other hospitals, said the care at Downstate is “just as good as elsewhere in the city.” Medical students choose it because it’s where science comes together with medicine and they have access to training, all of which provides the next generation with physicians.

But Brooklyn is already in a public health crisis, Foronjy said. Patients already wait months for appointments. The time to upgrade Downstate hospital is now, he said.