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New York State Department of Health — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Facility regulation

The commissioner is the executive enforcement authority over Article 28 healthcare facilities—conducting inspections, determining Medicaid necessity/appropriateness, administering patient-rights and public reporting systems, promulgating specified regulations, and imposing penalties and other compliance actions. Subject to the commissioner's approval, the Public Health and Health Planning Council (PHHPC) is a quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial authority that adopts and amends the State Sanitary Code, promulgates Article 28 regulations establishing operating-certificate standards, reporting and accounting systems, hospital classification and cost-finding methodologies, reimbursement and rate-setting frameworks, and penalty systems for residential health care facilities, and also exercises authority over the certificate of need process.

The certificate of need (CON) process is a regulatory mechanism used to oversee the establishment, construction, renovation, and major equipment acquisition of healthcare facilities. The CON process aims to control health care costs and prevent duplicative services by ensuring new investments meet a community need. New York's CON requirements are among the most extensive in the nation, covering all six major categories of health services: hospital beds, non-hospital beds, medical equipment, new facilities, new services, and even emergency medical transport, and New York is unique in applying CON laws to dentists' offices.

The department enforces nurse staffing transparency and planning by requiring Article 28 hospitals and nursing homes to disclose unit-level staffing and nursing-sensitive outcome metrics on request, while general hospitals must maintain nurse-led clinical-staffing committees that annually file and implement unit- and shift-specific staffing plans, incorporating acuity, skill-mix and service-specific minimums (e.g., ICU/CCU, OR, perinatal, burn, PICU, transplant), including a 1:2 RN-to-patient minimum in ICU/critical care.

In 1995, after a series of inspections by the Department the largest sperm bank in New York State was ordered to close (and no longer operate semen banks and blood banks), over the objections of its owner the Daxor Corporation and its president, CEO, and majority shareholder Joseph Feldschuh, by New York State Supreme Court Justice Harold Tompkins. The Justice found that Daxor had repeatedly endangered the public health over several years. A 1993 inspection had documented 517 violations by the sperm bank, including its failure to screen sperm donors properly for sexually transmitted diseases. Rather, the inspections by the Department showed that Daxor had, in fact, made available semen from men who had tested positive for hepatitis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea. Daxor employees told government investigators that Feldschuh had instructed them to make false entries on business records and to lie to investigators. Feldschuh claimed New York State Health Department officials were conspiring to shut down his business, sued them three times, appealed three times, and lost each of the six times.

History

In 1866, the state legislature passed the Metropolitan Health Law and established the NYC Metropolitan Board of Health, and in 1870 the legislature replaced it with the NYC Department of Health. The State Board of Health was created 18 May 1880 by the 103rd Legislature. The State Department of Health and its commissioner were created by an act of 19 February 1901 of the 124th Legislature, superseding the board.

The earliest New York state laws regarding public health were quarantine laws for the port of New York, first passed by the New York General Assembly in 1758. The 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic precipitated the 1799–1800 creation of the New York Marine Hospital, and in 1801 its resident physician and the health officers of the port were constituted as the New York City board of health. The 1826–1837 cholera pandemic precipitated further legislation. In 1847 a law mandated civil registration of vital events (births, marriages, and deaths). The 1881–1896 cholera pandemic further caused an expansion of its powers to compel reporting and to perform the duties of local boards of health.

The certificate of need (CON) requirement was created by New York in 1964. In 1965 the department was given central responsibility over hospitals and related facilities. 2010 state budget legislation abolished the Public Health Council and the State Hospital Review and Planning Council and consolidated their functions into the newly created Public Health and Health Planning Council (PHHPC). The Nursing Care Quality Protection Act was amended in 2021 requiring general hospitals to establish clinical staffing committees to develop and oversee clinical staffing plans, to include specific nurse-to-patient ratios for each unit and work shift.

The state implemented Medicaid in 1966 and designated the state Department of Social Services (DSS) as the "single state agency" but required it to contract with the Health Department. The Social Services Department and local social districts were responsible for eligibility determinations and paying claims, while the Health Department and local health districts were responsible for settings standards (including fees schedules) and supervising and surveilling providers. Oversight of adult homes, enriched housing programs, residences for adults, assisted living programs, and public homes (other than shelters for adults) were transferred from DSS by the Welfare Reform Act of 1997. In 2012, the Health Department started assuming administrative responsibilities for Medicaid from the counties.

By 1970 the state began to regulate health insurance reimbursement rates, in 1983 began all-payer rate setting, and by 1986-1988 had moved to a case-based system. In 1982–1983 the state overhauled the hospital reimbursement system by imposing revenue caps, creating regional bad debt and charity care pools, and shifting all payors into a uniform prospective payment methodology (NYPHRM I). In 1987 the New York State Council on Graduate Medical Education was created by executive order. In 1988 the state established a mandatory DRG-based case payment system for all payors, continued bad debt and charity pools through payor add-ons and revenue assessments, provided direct and indirect cost reimbursements for graduate medical education, added quality protections and HMO negotiation authority, and aimed to curb hospital cost growth (NYPHRM III). In 1996 these were replaced by the current Health Care Reform Act (HCRA), allowing negotiated reimbursement rates and establishing tax funding for public goods like graduate medical education, charity care, and public health. The Health Care Reform Act of 2000 (HCRA 2000) was a major extension and modification that made significant changes to how New York State funded hospitals, subsidized care for the uninsured, and managed health insurance programs. In 2006 the Hospital Financial Assistance Law (HFAL or Manny's Law) was enacted requiring hospitals to adopt and publicize uniform financial assistance policies, including income-based limits on charges, sliding-scale discounts, reasonable payment terms, and restrictions on aggressive collections, as a condition for receiving ICP payments.

In 1998 the department was given authority over the health insurance external appeals process.