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May 04, 2024

In record

A hospital industry group and labor union led the charge in lobbying spending in 2022, a year that saw a record-shattering $331 million in overall spending in New York, the state’s ethics commission

A hospital industry group and labor union led the charge in lobbying spending in 2022, a year that saw a record-shattering $331 million in overall spending in New York, the state’s ethics commission found. High spending among health groups represents a push to increase Medicaid rates and address labor issues.

The Healthcare Education Project, an organization jointly created by of the labor union 1199SEIU and the Greater New York Hospital Association, earned first place on the list of top spenders, paying $5.7 million on lobbying efforts in 2022, according to a report released Monday by the state's Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government.

Both GNYHA and the union also made the list of top spenders on their own, spending $3.4 million and $2.3 million on lobbying, respectively.

While it’s typical for health care groups to lead the pack of top spenders, health care spending this year seemed “particularly lopsided,” said Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center, an Albany-based think tank.

Spending was somewhat striking because of the political agenda put forth by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022—mainly, that she did not come to office with a controversial health care agenda, Hammond said.

“In fact if you look at the budget, it was the most generous proposal a governor has made on health care in a long, long time,” Hammond said, noting that Hochul was amenable to significant Medicaid rate increases.

“So what was there for the industry to lobby about?,” Hammond said. “The industry wanted even more.”

Kenneth Raske, president of GNYHA, said that the organization’s spending on lobbying in 2022 was tied to its efforts to include more Medicaid funding in the recent budget, as well as stop health insurers from denying hospital claims.

“The results in the budget were not satisfactory,” Raske said. “Despite all of our efforts, and all the… help that we got from 1199, the budget result on Medicaid was still woefully inadequate.”

The final budget this year included a 7.5% Medicaid reimbursement rate increase for hospital inpatient services and nursing homes, as well as a 6.5% bump for outpatient hospital services and assisted living, an investment of $1.2 billion, according to the governor’s office. Some organizations called for a rate as high as 20%.

But with losses in funding from changes to the 340B drug program, which impacts safety-net providers, those increases were not enough, Raske said.

The pandemic exacerbated many long-standing problems facing New York’s health care system, putting safety-net hospitals at the brink of closure, threatening access to long-term care and creating critical staffing shortages, said Bryn Lloyd-Bollard, a spokesperson for 1199SEIU.

“Against this backdrop, 1199SEIU members were very active in fighting for quality care across the state in 2022,” Lloyd-Bollard said of the union’s lobbying contributions. “We invested significant resources as part of our efforts to raise awareness of important healthcare issues–including the need to close the Medicaid funding gap, secure fair pay for home care workers, improve staffing in nursing homes and address New York’s growing mental health crisis.”

Hammond said that the health care organizations have used challenges that affected hospitals and health care workers during the pandemic to bolster political efforts, running television advertisements that were often misleading about cuts to the Medicaid program to advocate for higher payments, for example. The Healthcare Education Project and 1199SEIU spent $5.5 million and $2.1 million on advertising, respectively.

Hammond added that GNYHA and 1199SEIU have become “lobbying juggernauts” that understand how to exert their influence.

“Separately, they would be very formidable political forces,” Hammond said. “When they are working together, they are very difficult to resist.”

Raske said that GNYHA will “redouble” its lobbying efforts to secure additional Medicaid funding in the next budget.

“I do not know if we have the resources to do that,” Raske said. “But I do know that we have the will.” —Amanda D’Ambrosio

Northwell Health landed a nearly 4% operating margin in the second quarter of 2023 due to double-digit revenue growth from the last year and continued Covid-19 funding from the federal government, according to financial documents released Tuesday.

The health system’s total revenues in the second quarter hit $4.3 billion, an 11% increase from the same time period in 2022. Patient revenue totaled $3.8 billion and other revenue, which includes lab services, grants, contracts and pharmacy sales, surpassed $370 million, both of which were nearly 9% higher than the previous year.

The increases in operating revenue were driven by increases in patient volume, payment rates, pharmacy sales and continued growth in the ambulatory and physician network, according to management’s discussion of the financial results. Operating revenue also included $102 million in Covid-19 relief funding.

A spokesperson from Northwell Health said that increased volume for certain services and Covid-19 relief funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover previous pandemic expenses “offset the impact of staffing challenges relating to the labor market and other inflationary pressures that continue to increase costs and pressure operating margins.”

The health system also saw significant expense increases in the last quarter. Total expenses reached $4.1 billion, a 9% increase from the second quarter of 2022. Salary expenses rose by 11% from last year to total $2.2 billion and benefit expenses rose 8% to reach $472 million. Supply expenses in the second quarter totaled $1.2 billion, up almost 7% from last year.

Management said that in addition to the pressures of inflation on wages and supplies, increased operating expenses resulted from investments in facilities, safety and quality initiatives, expansion of its ambulatory care network and updates in information technology.

“Continued actions focused on operational efficiency and strategic growth are expected to help maintain operating results at pre-Covid historical levels,” the Northwell spokesperson said.

Northwell Health, which has 21 hospitals in the New York metropolitan region, treats more than two million people each year. —A.D.

The Manhattan-based nonprofit Comunilife has received a roughly $95.6 million contract from the city to maintain hundreds of housing units for people living with HIV/AIDS.

The organization is getting the funding from the city’s Department of Social Services/Human Resources Administration, according to a notice published Tuesday in the City Record. The money will go toward 368 units of supportive housing that Comunilife already operates spread across developments in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, with a majority located in the Bronx, according to Comunilife President and CEO Dr. Rosa Gil.

The housing units are for HIV/AIDS Services Administration clients and their families. The administration is a city program that provides services for people living with HIV or AIDS, such as case management and assistance applying for public benefits.

The city also recently awarded the St. Nicks Alliance Corp., a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, a roughly $83.2 million contract to maintain 459 supportive housing units for HASA clients. This was part of its overall effort to find organizations to run 2,272 units of supportive housing for people with HIV/AIDS. The contract for Comunilife appears to be part of this effort as well.

Representatives for the city did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Comunilife, based in the Garment District near Penn Station, was founded in 1989 and aims to provide vulnerable communities with affordable and safe housing. The organization currently provides 1,107 units of permanent scatter site housing across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, according to its website.

Comunilife was one of 29 city organizations that received state funding earlier this year to build up to 5,000 supportive housing units across New York. —Eddie Small

Up to 40% of water service lines in New York City could be contaminated by lead, according to research from Columbia University released today.

Of the 850,000 service lines, which bring water to residential buildings, 16% were potentially made of lead and 27% were made of an unknown material that could be lead, according to a study published in the academic journal Environmental Health Perspectives on Wednesday.

Brooklyn was home to 91,000 potential lead-contaminated service lines, the greatest number of any borough. But the highest proportion of contaminated lead services lines were located in the Bronx and Queens, where one in five of all lines were at risk of lead contamination in each borough.

The researchers found that lead-contaminated water service lines were more likely to be located in zip codes with a higher proportion of Latino residents, as well as in communities where children were already vulnerable to lead concerns in paint, dust and other substances.

“The high number of service lines that might contain lead in residential buildings throughout NYC and the significant inequities in lead service line prevalence underscores the importance of prioritizing lead service line replacement for the most impacted communities,” said Dr. Anne Nigra, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health who led this research.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule requires public water systems to conduct routine evaluations at taps across the distribution system, but these regulations are not enough to reduce water exposure and mitigate racial disparities, the researchers said.

Nigra added that city and state officials should take equity into consideration when removing lead-contaminated water service lines. —A.D.

STORY UPDATE: This story about accountable care organizations in Medicare's Shared Savings Program has been updated with a statement from New York City Health + Hospitals.

NEW COVID VARIANT: City health commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan warned New Yorkers on Tuesday that a mutation of SARS-CoV-2 known as BA.2.86 has been detected in the city’s wastewater. While the health department has yet to detect this variant in a city resident, the virus is almost certainly circulating throughout the population, Vasan said. He said that the variant could be more likely to evade immunity from vaccines or previous infection, but noted that there have been no indications that it is more severe.

NURSING HOME PRESS CONFERENCE: Union representatives and workers at Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Long Island will hold a press conference this afternoon, urging state health officials to appoint a temporary receiver to take over the facility. 1199SEIU, which represents the nursing home workers, has criticized Cold Spring Hills administrators for failing to pay worker benefits and jeopardizing employees' health care coverage.

MEDICARE ADVANTAGE: A group of municipal retirees crashed a press conference attended by Mayor Eric Adams on Monday to push back on the administration’s effort to switch their health insurance to a private Medicare Advantage plan, The City reports. The demonstration comes a few weeks after a Manhattan Supreme Court judge blocked the city’s plan to transfer retired workers from supplemental health insurance to Medicare Advantage. The decision stopped the city from automatically enrolling retirees in new insurance, which was set to begin on September 1.

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