The Chronicle: Faculty Union Sues to Disrupt Plan That Would Privatize a SUNY Teaching Hospital
A plan to privatize the State University of New York Upstate Medical University — or at least its teaching hospital — prompted a union to file a lawsuit this week challenging its legality and warning that medical education and patient care could suffer.
“We believe that, if the responsibility of medical education at our teaching hospitals shifts to corporations, quality would suffer as concern about a healthy bottom line, rather than healthy citizens, becomes the main priority,” said William E. Scheuerman, president of United University Professions.
The union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, represents SUNY’s professors and professional staff members, including 2,200 employees at the medical university. That facility, in Syracuse, includes a teaching hospital, a medical school, and other affiliated health-care colleges.
A commission charged with streamlining the state’s sprawling health-care system recommended a plan, which became law on January 1, that would privatize the Syracuse medical center and study the possible privatization of SUNY hospitals in Stony Brook and Brooklyn.
The plan calls for Crouse Hospital, a nonprofit hospital in Syracuse, and the SUNY Upstate Medical Center, as the university is also called, to join “under a single unified governance structure under the control of an entity other than the State University of New York.”
Follow
