November 2010 mailing
cphs*
*Putting the public back in public health.
The next CPHS meeting is scheduled for Monday, November 1st, 2010 at 6:30 pm. The meeting will be held at the Urban Justice Center, 123 William Street, 16th floor Conference Room. We are pleased to have as our guest speaker Jenny Rejeske, Director of Health Advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition. Jenny will talk about health care for immigrants in New York. We will also be talking about some of the state proposals for Medicaid and the impact on the health care safety net.
Denise West, Deputy Executive Director at the Brooklyn Perinatal Network (BPN) presented at the October meeting. BPN is one of 40 networks around the state. They are a Facilitated Enroller agency helping people apply for public health insurance and they work on Infant Mortality Reduction initiatives. BPN is also working in Brownsville on a special project that includes the development of a social risk assessment tool that the State Department of Health is looking at. BPN sponsored a health disparities conference with Assemblyman Towns. CPHS and BPN cooperate in joint work. CPHS supports the budget efforts of BPN in the city budget; we worked together on the Child Health Initiative; and now in the Taste for Change Coalition. There was some description of the program that the Taste for Change Coalition is proposing.
Dr. Harold Appel presented information on the planned Harlem Hospital demonstration to protest cuts. Matt Bishop presented the work of the Young Invincibles group which got organized around health reform. The proposed Health and Hospitals Corporation cuts were discussed, including the closing of five child health clinics and a dental clinic.
We are sad to say that the HHC clinics and dental clinic closed on October 15th. There are now just 19 Child Health Clinics left in New York City – where there were 49 in the 1990's. This is not a good statement about care for children in their communities. There were efforts to save these precious resources but they were unfortunately unsuccessful. Much thanks to Cynthia Figueroa, a parent of a child that used the Glebe Child Health Clinic – and to CPHS board members Danny Porro and Carmen Santana who worked on getting support for the clinics. We circulated a Petition and got lots of people signing with request to keep the clinics open. We also thank Barbara Benson of Crain's Health Pulse for her short piece on Monday. But the clinics closed. CPHS is committed to working with other organizations that understand that we need a health care safety-net locally accessible, particularly in low-income, medically underserved communities. Having a health insurance card with no place to go with it is not a solution. Health Care Reform's expansion of health insurance coverage to more people is important, but so is ensuring that there are health care services in our communities for residents to get care.
CPHS is working with a number of organizations and unions to convince the State Health Department that a request that has been made to the CMS, the federal Medicaid agency, for funding for hospitals needs to be changed. Funding is needed for the health care safety net – which includes public hospitals, community health centers, and some voluntary hospitals that are available and accessible in their communities, serving both Medicaid patients and the uninsured. CPHS was actively involved in exposing the problems in an earlier federal funding program for hospitals – Community Health Care Conversion Demonstration Project (CHCCDP). In a 2003 report, CHCCDP: Are We Getting Our Money's Worth? Monitoring the Use of Community Health Care Conversion Demonstration Project Funds, CPHS documented a wasting of funds and a lack of oversight and monitoring by the State. The Executive Summary of the report appears on CPHS website – www.cphsnyc.org With the current 'attacks' on Medicaid spending and the deep concerns about accountability in the spending of public funds, it is necessary to stand up and say NO MORE. Call and ask us about this issue – better yet let us know that you support what we are doing. Come to the CPHS meeting and learn more about this issue and how you can participate.
