PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. -
Hospitals across the North Country are worried about what going over the fiscal cliff could mean for their patients and employees because of potentially dramatic cuts.
"What we're facing now down in Washington is some of the most horrific cuts I have ever seen in, I hate to say it, my forty year career in healthcare," Adirondack Health President and CEO Chandler Ralph said.
Adirondack Health, which is the name for numerous health facilities in the Tri-Lakes area, is joining with CVPH Medical Center and Elizabethtown Community Hospital to talk potential fiscal cliff health care cuts.
President of CVPH Stephens Mundy says he knows how close the cliff is and what it could mean to hospitals are after attending a meeting in Washington DC about health care and the cliff.
"It was very difficult to come back feeling anything but impending doom," Mundy said.
Many of the cuts talked about would be in medicare or medicaid which is how hospitals are paid for much of their services rendered.
"It's no longer can I tweak the system here or there. You have to take a scalpel to the services we deliver in our community," Ralph said.
It's not only services that are in jeopardy according to these hospitals but jobs At CVPH 61 percent of revenue is somehow paid to employees.
On the other side of the fiscal cliff hospitals in this region could face more $432 million in cuts over the next ten years and that could hurt some of the smallest, most rural facilities the most like Elizabethtown Community Hospital. The hospital has critical access designation, which means it is thirty five miles away from the nearest big facility.
It still offers primary care, chemotherapy and supports local health centers. But it projects that $400,000, or 2 percent of its budget, could be cut if things go wrong with the fiscal cliff.
"The cuts could impact any or all of those particular services," Elizabethtown Community Hospital spokesperson Jane Hooper said.
Fletcher Allen Health Care also released a statement on the fiscal cliff saying "across-the-board cuts will significantly compromise our ability as an academic medical center to care for the sickest, most vulnerable patients, maintain a strong research program, and train doctors to meet health care demands in."
