Gov. Kathy Hochul has greenlit seven hospital partnerships across the state in an attempt to help struggling safety-nets turn around their finances.
The initiative, first announced in last year’s state budget, is designed to incentivize financially stable institutions to help cash-strapped medical institutions to improve the quality of care and their financial sustainability.
For example, the state will infuse up to $188 million to Memorial Sloan Kettering and Jamaica Hospital to create a comprehensive cancer center in Queens. The Upper East Side oncology center will help Jamaica Hospital build a radiation and infusion therapy center on its campus, and in exchange the new center will refer patients to Memorial Sloan Kettering for advanced treatment or participation in clinical trials, the governor’s office said.
St. Barnabas Hospital, a safety-net institution in the Bronx, will also team up with Downtown Brooklyn-based startup Cityblock Health and Union Community Health Center in the Bronx to reduce unnecessary hospital admissions and improve access to behavioral health services in the Bronx, the state said. The plan includes an upgrade to St. Barnabas Hospital’s emergency department, which sees 75,000 patients each year, and a new value-based insurance contract to manage behavioral health needs for 35,000 members of the Medicaid plan HealthFirst.
Montefiore’s New Rochelle Hospital will also partner with Westchester Community Health Center, a federally qualified health center, to modernize its neonatal intensive care unit and improve maternal and child health care.
The governor’s office did not answer a question from Crain’s about how much funding is earmarked for other safety-net hospital partnerships.
Hochul allocated $300 million to the health care safety-net transformation program in last year’s budget, but demand for the program outpaced available funding in its first year, according to the governor’s office. Hochul said she plans to increase funding for the program in her 2026 executive budget, which she is set to release next week.
