News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Julie Rowe
The Opportunity Agenda
jrowe@opportunityagenda.org
212-334-5321
347-556-1896

NEW POLL: 77% of New Yorkers AGREE Hospital Closures would be BAD for New York’s Health Care System

Findings indicate public opinion is at odds with likely recommendations of Berger Commission, to be announced next week.

NEW YORK - November 20, 2006.  On November 28th, New York’s Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century will release recommendations for which hospitals and nursing homes to be closed or consolidated throughout the state.  However, a representative statewide survey commissioned by The Opportunity Agenda and Harvard University shows that a substantial majority of New Yorkers (77%) believe that hospital closures in New York would be a bad thing for the health of New York residents and the state’s health care system.

A significant majority of those who feel that closures would be a bad thing report several major reasons, including: “hospital closures or consolidation will hurt poor people” (78%); “closures will not address the major problems facing the healthcare system in New York” (75%); “there will not be enough beds in the case of a bioterror attack or epidemic outbreak” (70%); and, “health care workers will lose their jobs” (66%).

Nearly half of New Yorkers (47%) believe that the Commission will not close any hospitals (12%) or will recommend closures of between 1-10 hospitals (35%), numbers that indicate a lack of public knowledge about the commission’s mission and plans, and grossly underestimate the number of closures experts predict are likely.

New Yorkers’ View of Health Care Equity

New Yorkers overwhelmingly see health care as a human rights issue.  Fully, 89 percent of New Yorkers believe that health care should be a right for all New Yorkers.  Further, nearly 70 percent believe that government (federal, 41%; state and local, 28%) should be “mainly responsible for ensuring that everyone in New York gets the health care that they need.” 

“New Yorkers are clear in their agreement that health care is a human right we all share,” said Alan Jenkins, executive director of The Opportunity Agenda.  “Our state’s health planning and policy need to better reflect this, creating a system that works for everyone.”

One of the major concerns surrounding the Commission’s work is that health care facilities in poor and underserved areas will be closed first, following an historic trend. A significant plurality of New Yorkers are still relatively unaware of health care inequities that research shows plague racial and ethnic minority communities in New York.  For instance, 51 percent of respondents say that Blacks and Hispanics in New York have the same or better access to health care as do Whites. New Yorkers are more knowledgeable of existing health care inequities between the poor and wealthy in New York, yet 33 percent say that poor people in New York have the same or better access to health care as do wealthy people.

Despite New Yorkers’ low levels of awareness of health care inequality, they strongly support government efforts to protect the right to care.  Indeed, New Yorkers still feel that it “should be the responsibility of the state government to ensure that racial or ethnic minorities (74%) and the poor (76%) have an equal chance as white and wealthy people to get the health care services that they need”.

“Compared to national trends, New Yorkers are significantly more supportive of an activist state government to reduce health care inequities between the haves and have nots of the state,” said Kalahn Taylor-Clark, Ph.D., MPH, a public opinion expert and research fellow at Harvard University and designer of the study.

Brian D. Smedley, Ph.D., research director of The Opportunity Agenda, said the poll’s findings are critically important because New Yorkers’ views about health care system problems haven’t been assessed, even on the eve of the Berger Commission’s report. 

“What’s striking is the depth of New Yorkers’ support for a more equitable health care system,” said Smedley.  “In large majorities, this poll finds that New Yorkers believe that government should actively work to ensure everyone receives the health care they need.  In the same vein, these findings also show that New Yorkers are opposed to any effort to close hospitals and health care systems that doesn’t first and foremost weigh the potential costs to affected communities.” 

Personal Experiences with the Health Care System in New York

Even though a majority of respondents feel that the healthcare services in New York can be considered excellent or good (63%), New Yorkers also note several problems with health care services in their communities.  A majority of New Yorkers feel that the cost of health care (91%) and poor quality health care services (62%) are a problem.  Lesser pluralities of New Yorkers feel that problems with transportation to get to a healthcare facility (49%), language and cultural barriers in the doctor’s office (45%), and not enough healthcare facilities in the area (42%), are problems in their communities.  Not having enough health care facilities in their areas is of particular concern to African Americans (52%), Latinos (59%), and people making less than $25,000 a year (56%) (which is significantly more concerning for these groups than for whites (36%) and people making >$75,000 a year (32%)).

The survey was conducted between October 24th and November 12th, 2006 for the Harvard School of Public Health and The Opportunity Agenda, a communications and research organization  For more information, go to www.opportunityagenda.org.  A statewide representative sample of 479 New Yorkers were surveyed, which included 100 Hispanics and 105 African Americans. The survey has a margin of sampling error of +/- 4.48 percentage points.

Methodology

The New York State Health Care Survey was conducted for The Opportunity Agenda and the Harvard School of Public Health via telephone by International Communications Research (ICR), an independent research company.  Interviews were conducted from October 24th to November 13th, 2006 among a representative sample of 479 respondents age 18 and older in the state of New York, with an oversample of 100 Hispanic and 105 African Americans.  The margin of error is +/-4.48% at the 95% confidence level. Note that sampling error is only one of many potential sources of error in this or any other public opinion poll.

The Opportunity Agenda staff and researchers at Harvard University designed and analyzed the survey.