LICH Hospital Saga Exhausting Everybody, Even Developers

Long Island College Hospital. Photo: MK Metz, McBrooklyn.com

Patients, nurses, doctors, lawyers, and now even the rejected bidder for Long Island College Hospital (LICH) are feeling totally burned over the quick-silver developments surrounding the sales of LICH by SUNY.

In Friday's action, bidder Brooklyn Health Partners, delivered a check for $25 million dollars as a non-refundable deposit to show their intentions to buy the hospital. The court accepted their check.

By the end of the day, however, SUNY -- which wants to move on to their second bidder, Peebles -- objected to the deposit and asked state Supreme Court Just Johnny Lee Baynes (an even-tempered man but even his patience is starting to fray)  to tell BHP to take their money back.

There are at least three and possibly four lawsuits brewing. The most significant one is being brought by the community groups and doctors, which object to one small detail: that SUNY's evaluators on the Technical Panel did not follow the rules, which required them to give more votes to hospital proposals.

Rather, they voted for developers.

Throwing out the non-compliant votes would rank Prime Healthcare hospital chain as the number two bid. Prime is a solid chain and it's actually highly ranked in many areas, though they had legal trouble with union 1199 SEIU in California.

SUNY objects to throwing out the non-compliant votes.

Brooklyn Health Partners still in the game? $25 million check returned late Friday [Brooklyn Eagle]


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