(BROOKLYN, NEW YORK) - United University Professions, (UUP) the nation’s largest Higher Education Union, is calling a State University of New York (SUNY) report gauging community interest in its plan to close SUNY Downstate University Hospital a total sham that was compiled behind closed doors and no doubt is contrived to back its ill-conceived vision for Brooklyn’s sole Public Teaching Hospital.

UUP President Fred Kowal blasted SUNY Chancellor John King, Jr. for his hastily cobbled-together effort to gather community input more than a month after he announced a plan to shutter the facility and following intense and immediate opposition to the plan from the community.

A plan that would move services - such as Brooklyn’s only Kidney Transplant Center - to other hospitals and cram what’s left into a wing of the Kings County Hospital Center, across the street.

Said Kowal: “If the Chancellor and SUNY really cared about what the community thinks about their plan to close Downstate, they would have included the community in conversations before they announced plans to shut down our hospital.  We know that the community doesn’t want SUNY Downstate to close because we’ve asked them and they told us, face-to-face.  Focus groups that SUNY relied on for community input were invite-only.  They weren’t publicized nor were they open to the media.  Without public scrutiny and open public discourse, SUNY was free to collect data in a very secretive and controlled way that would support its pre-determined outcomes and its plan to shut down Downstate Hospital.”

A SUNY community survey distributed to Brooklyn residents was complicated and structurally problematic, UUP said.

In its report, SUNY said it sent the survey to 36,000 people in Downstate’s service area - but only received 1,049 responses, a paltry response rate of just 2.9%.

“This entire process, which was conducted in secret from the very start, is an insult to the people of Central Brooklyn,” Kowal said.

To Read This Labor News Story In Its Entirety, Go To: Skewed SUNY Report on Downstate Hospital is an ‘insult’ to Central Brooklyn Community (uupinfo.org)