A massive campaign has been launched by a broad spectrum of Brooklyn leaders to demand answers from Maimonides Hospital, due to an outrageous number of complaints – many of them literal horror stories – over the years. Ads have appeared in just about every local newspaper and on buses, and a website has been launched where people can submit their complaints – www.SaveMaimo.com.
YWN will be publishing many articles in the coming days to educate the public about this campaign, which is expected to be relentless until serious changes happen at the hospital to improve the quality of care for patients.
On Friday morning, a letter signed by all of the local elected officials representing the hospital was released demanding answers for alleged financial mismanagement, low staffing levels and consistent complaints about lack of quality of care. Highly credible sources tell YWN that the letter is a result of many attempts by community leaders and elected officials to engage the hospital in conversation, only to be ignored by the hospital’s leadership.
Stay tuned for YWN for the latest information on this breaking story.
July 7, 2022
Mr. Kenneth Gibbs
President and CEO, Maimonides Medical Center
4802 10th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11219
Dear Mr. Gibbs,
We are concerned with the current management of Maimonides Medical Center. There have been multiple media reports of mismanagement of resources and our constituents have voiced their frustration with us about the lack of care Maimonides has provided to their families. This is unacceptable and untenable.
We have serious concerns about financial well-being of the hospital. We are aware of nurse shortages at the hospital and fear that it is due to financial mismanagement. If this is not corrected, we believe the hospital will lose patients due to poor care and exasperate the hospital’s financial status.
As you know the bulk of Maimonides Medical Center funding comes directly or indirectly from government sources. As the elected officials representing the area, we feel compelled to ensure that these resources are used responsibly and that the concerns of our constituents – the bulk of the hospital’s patients are heard.
In an effort to forge a productive path forward, we ask that you please join us for a town-hall style meeting where you can engage the public directly.
Please give us a few options for times and dates this summer on a weeknight after 5pm. We will, of course, coordinate all the details of this town-hall style meeting. You can simply show up with your team to answer critical questions.
Sincerely,
Simcha Felder
Member of Senate, District 17
Robert Carroll
Member of Assembly, District 44
Simcha Eichenstein
Member of Assembly, District 48
Kalman Yeger
Member of NYC Council, District 44
Marcela Mitaynes
Member of Assembly, District 51
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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31 Responses
Last time I was taken to Maimonides Hospital was about 35, maybe 37 years ago. I waited for hours and was finally seen. On line in the waiting room a mother held a crying baby that was bleeding from its head.
They gave her some pads and told her to wait her turn. For hours.
Nebech, how many people died there back at the start of Covid from being put on ventilators?
Since when did YWN start shillling for the nurse’s union?
Who’s paying for all this? Seems like it’s got to be the employees’ union?
Many wonderful people are staffing Maimonides but not enough.
And if they would stop advertising about how good they are (usually by promoting 1 good statistic out of 99 terrible ones) and ‘advancing’, maybe they can actually take care of a few patients.
Their new building on 9th ave and 48th has beautiful and spacious waiting rooms. After spending a half-hour signing in with their new high-tech systems and then another 2 hours waiting for my 2-minute appointment (which didn’t happen until I reminded them that I was there), I understood why…
exasperate means annoy. exacerbate means to make worse.
How many of these complaints are in fact common against hospitals in general, particularly those serving large urban areas.
such kafuy tov , no hakaras hatov, to a hospital doing its best,
who cares what corrupt politicians say as if their management is so great
Wasn’t this hospital allowed COVID paitients to go without water and food for days and wouldn’t allow family members to bring or visit the victims??
I think I remember that the YW reported that a COVID dead patient phone was recovered in the possession of a nursing staff in New Jersey. ? ? ?
IMHO, the administration is empowered by great PR and the fawning cooperation of local Jewish publications.
Years ago, my Father, ZTZL was niftar in the ER after being transported by Hatzholo on a Shabbos. Maimonides was concerned about payment for the ER visit and demanded documents be photographed or otherwise hand delivered to them in 10 minutes before the person in charge left for the evening. Despite our full compliance and full insurance the acting administrator ordered the MD to not cooperate and not sign the Death certificate which caused inordinate delays. I believe that laws were broken in this action.
I must note that a famous Flatbush publication refused to ever print a letter with these facts and explained that the official position was to censor negative comments about Maimonides.
The money problem might stem from the fact that, the bulk of Maimonides patients are on Medicaid and Medicaid reimbursement rates are pathetic, at best.
I know I’ll get a bunch of thumbs down for this, BUT from my own personal experience I can attest that MMC is not any worse than any other hospital. MMC is not a 5-star hotel it is a hospital, and the nurses are not our “goytas”.
My niece is l”a a vegetable because of a mistake in Mt. Sinai Hospital and My wife’s grandmother died in another Manhattan hospital when someone forgot to reattach an oxygen tank. I broke my hand a few years ago at 10:00pm. My friend took me Lutheran, I waited from 10:30 until 1am to get an x-ray read (and only because the patient rep. helped me). At 4:30am I just left without a Dr. ever seeing me. MMC’s problem is US. For better or worse we are a very close-knit community – When one yid has a problem It becomes everyone’s problem. One friend talks to one friend who talks to another friend and each one feels as he himself experienced the problem. And the fact that 40 yrs. ago a certain Rebbi told his chasidim not to go to MMC doesn’t help MMC either. There is nothing MMC can do to change this fact. Of course, MMC isn’t perfect, it is unacceptable to have to wait hours in the ER and then again for a bed, however at all other hospitals if someone has a problem who really cares. The word of mouth doesn’t spread as fast in the non jewish community like in ours. I had 2 surgeries in MMC. My children had surgeries here. After my first surgery I spent 1 week in the hospital. Most of my children k”h were born here. My wife once needed emergency surgery and spent a week in the ICU. In every single case I was overall happy with the service. Again I will say MMC can improve, and it doesn’t help that the CEO gets a paycheck of over a million plus. I won’t doubt or minimize anyone’s bad experience, but to say it worse than any other hospital I beg to differ. H-shem should help that all the cholim should have a refua shelaima, and we should never need the services of any hospital.
Must be an election year
Once again they are following the lead of Hershey Tischler
So you can sit in a townhall setting to vent
Typical politicians answer another blue ribbon panel
We just might have to hold our nose and vote for the Bull in the China shop
Good Shabbos
With all do respect; these politicians who have there names signed on that letter are people who have done absolutely nothing for the community all they like doing is having their names plastered all over the place so they’ll sign any letter as long as it gets their name out into the public to try to make believe they’re actually doing something for the community but as a boropark resident I could hear by affirm that they have done nothing for the community and this is just another rich man pushing them to do something even though they don’t even know what it stands for and what’s really going on so this way doing it is not gonna help anything
I’m not in Brooklyn anymore, Thank you Hashemi, but this is really dumb of the hospital administration. Nobody can afford Negative Ad campaigns. They’re stupid for not agreeing to work things out. Could it be that they’re worried that their exorbitant salaries will be questioned?
Rambam must be turning in his grave for the misuse of his name.
This is the hospital Hatzala tells everyone NOT to go to unless they can’t possibly make it to the next place. Care is abysmal. Staff is uncaring and slow.
@dullradiance:
The fact that this letter supposedly was published by some “high end politicians” and they still couldn’t tell the difference, really exacerbates my exasperation with politicians.
“If this is not corrected, we believe the hospital will lose patients due to poor care and “exasperate” the hospital’s financial status.”
I think they meant “exacerbate”. Oy vey! This is from our elected officials?
I am here right now.
Severely short staffed.
CT scan done, attending nurse has no idea what for.
No Dr in sight.
One nurse per floor.
BH we have a private nurse attending, if not for her nothing would get done.
@sariray So for the edification of the Brooklyn olam which hospital does Hatzala tell everyone to go to?
As someone already mentioned, this sounds like a typical hospital where all patients are poor and on Medicaid with corresponding rates. Short of changing the medical system, the answer is to live in a community that has sufficient number of working people to support medical infrastructure.
I’m surprised that the article doesn’t mention how much Miamonides Medical Center messed up during COVID. I assumed that is what the lawsuit would have been about. So many COVID patients neglected, not being given food and water, denied the ability to have family members and friends visit, and people intubated needlessly. I know it’s not the only hospital with this issue. All hospitals that had these issues during COVID should be help accountable.
as a hatzalah member of bp i was there alot during covid people were dying left and right from hunger because the nurses did not want to enter the rooms to give them food from the “fear” of getting covid
There are many horror stories. We stopped going to them many years ago. My wife would likely have died when her appendix went gangrene and she never made it past triage in three hours. Luckily we were smart enough to simply walk out and go to a different hospital.
I shudder to think what would have happened if she had stayed there, and they did a CAT scan, which came back inconclusive. Would they have done the emergency exploratory surgery that she needed or sent her home? I don’t think I want to know the answer.
That the CEO makes a huge salary, is not surprising. That the CEO of a business losing money is making tons of money, also no surprise. The top salaries at mamonidies are probably comparable to those who hold similar positions at similar sized hospitals across the tri state area. Would peoples experiences at mmc be any better if the CEO earned $300 a week?
Mmc clientele are predominantly on Medicaid, notoriously horrible payers for any service. They are not getting $150,000,000 from Jeff bezos the way nyu did.
They have littleoney coming in,
That the CEO makes a huge salary, is not surprising. That the CEO of a business losing money is making tons of money, also no surprise. The top salaries at mamonidies are probably comparable to those who hold similar positions at similar sized hospitals across the tri state area. Would peoples experiences at mmc be any better if the CEO earned $300 a week?
Mmc clientele are predominantly on Medicaid, notoriously horrible payers for any service. They are not getting $150,000,000 from Jeff bezos the way nyu did.
They have little money coming in, the bottom of the barrel 1199 union nurses who are horrible, a clientele that thinks mmc is the Ritz, the nurses station a concierge stand, mix it all together and you have a toxic brew that is the current mess that is mmc.
Real Truth wrote “as a hatzalah member of bp i was there alot during covid people were dying left and right from hunger because the nurses did not want to enter the rooms to give them food from the “fear” of getting covid”
To “The Real Truth”, how would you know that the covid patients died from hunger, rather than from something else, like maybe Covid?
You looked through the window and could tell that their fat reserves were depleted? And maybe you saw they had massive edema in their lower limbs?
I very much hope that you are NOT a Hatzola member, with your ignorant comments here.
to: shlomo 2 i guess you were misinformed about what was going on in the hospitals during covid
i personally know people that left the hospital without signing out and hatzalah treated them at home and today they are alive and well. when in the hospital they “dying” from covid
There is another situation which is the kashruth level of its kitchen.
Being in middle of Boro Park it should have a good and reliable hechsher.
They should really have the best.
For example, there is no reason why Maimonides should use the same dishwasher for meat and dairy etc etc etc.
Same with nursing homes, many don’t even have a mashgiach timidity.
Our elderly and sick deserve the best hechsherim.
A good and strong hechsher would be acceptable by those that are lenient and those that are stricter in their kashruth observance.
Time to change this too.
Jewish Hospitals in many parts of the world were established to treat people with the special care that a yid that feels for his fellow have as opposed to the way things were happening in other hospitals that were used by Yidn until the Jewish Hospitals were opened.
A large part of the buildings etc were donated for that purpose.
Somehow the management lost the yidishe heart necessary which was exchanged by the school that holds the same principals that the hospitals had that prompted Yidn to open the Maimonides hospitals of this world.
I think this is what we are lamenting.
A new Hospital or fixing this one would need to have the Jewish principals that made these Hospitals to be opened in the first place at its core in a way that cannot be legally changed.