Upstate New York hospitals don't compete with New York City hospitals, so it's not really about competition, so much as showing the advantage of there being central control over hospitals that...
Upstate New York hospitals don't compete with New York City hospitals, so it's not really about competition, so much as showing the advantage of there being central control over hospitals that aren't all in the same city, allowing load balancing.
If there were competing networks that were more like Kaiser and they had a few hospitals in New York City and others elsewhere, I think we'd see load-balancing there too, though on a smaller scale.
Local governments are often no better at sharing, as is seen with the NIMBY movement.
Cuomo announced that he had met with New York hospital leaders and come up with a plan to, in effect, merge them into one operating system with many different locations. From Buffalo to NYC, hospitals will be sharing staff, patients and supplies for the foreseeable future, with Albany overseeing the distribution of resources.
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The top priority in Cuomo’s plan is moving staff from less affected hospitals to those buckling under a surge of Covid-19 cases. Doctors and nurses from upstate hospitals will be transferred to NYC facilities. Likewise, hospitals will try to send patients from overcrowded hospitals to those with available beds. Ventilators, which support critical patients’ breathing, could also be shuffled between hospitals based on need.
The New York state department of health will manage the movement of staff and resources, in conjunction with hospitals. It will set certain thresholds for the number of occupied ICU beds or ICU Covid-19 cases that would trigger some of these transfers. The state will also coordinate the distribution of the protective gear that helps keep doctors and nurses healthy and able to work from the various state and hospital stockpiles.
It's almost like having private companies providing health care in separate networks, competing with each other, is not a good idea.
Upstate New York hospitals don't compete with New York City hospitals, so it's not really about competition, so much as showing the advantage of there being central control over hospitals that aren't all in the same city, allowing load balancing.
If there were competing networks that were more like Kaiser and they had a few hospitals in New York City and others elsewhere, I think we'd see load-balancing there too, though on a smaller scale.
Local governments are often no better at sharing, as is seen with the NIMBY movement.
From the article:
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