Whipped Cream Difficulties

I can’t honestly recommend that you use your limited number of free NYT stories this month to go over and read this article. After all, it is about an obscure non-profit hospital in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn; unless you live in that area, why should you care?

What piques my interest about this story, though, is the chain of…shall we say, questionable management decisions by the hospital. For example:

• The hospital’s former president was hired in spite of the fact that he’d never managed a hospital before.
• He drove a Bentley Continental GT to work. (Yes, he has the right to drive whatever he wants, but that’s a $160,000 car for an administrator at a non-profit hospital. As a side note, why would anyone in NYC drive a nice car? I know I’d be worried about mine getting trashed. I’d get a cheap beater; if I really wanted a nice car, I’d garage it outside the city and drive the beater in and out.)
• The operative word there is “drove”. He had his license pulled, under circumstances he’s not forthcoming about, in 2009.
• At that point, he parked the Bentley at the hospital and had the hospital take over the multi-thousand dollar insurance payment. (He says that he reimbursed the hospital, but I’m not clear if that has been confirmed yet.)
• Then he started using the hospital’s vehicles, a Lincoln Town Car and a Cadillac Escalade, for his personal use. He used two security guards, who were being paid overtime pay, as drivers.
• “…he suspected that the drivers of the Town Car and the Escalade were eavesdropping on his conversations. So he had the hospital purchase a used stretch limousine for about $33,000. “
• “One member of the hospital’s board obtained for the pharmacy that he owned the exclusive right to market prescription drugs to hospital patients.” (Is it just me, or is that a really badly written sentence? I know: glass houses, stones.)
• “Another board member lent $2.4 million to the ailing Wyckoff at 12 percent interest, with the hospital required to put up several of its buildings as security.”
• “13 of the hospital’s 22 board members declared at least one conflict of interest.”
• Various politicians have managed to get friends of theirs hired into high level positions. For example, one councilman’s wife is the PR director.
• “The hospital all but defaulted on its $109 million in state-secured bonds, forcing the taxpayers to cover $10 million due to bondholders before the state agreed in May to defer the hospital’s overdue payments.”
• “Wyckoff no longer even carries malpractice insurance. ” Holy. Crap.
• I haven’t even mentioned the disbarred lawyer who graduated from a Caribbean medical school and got a residency at Wyckoff, even though the hospital didn’t have any openings for residents. (Can you say “John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, the Senate Democratic leader”?)

Side note: “The hospital recently sold the stretch limousine for $18,000; it had cost $33,000 eight months ago. It sold the Lincoln Town Car for $9,000 and hopes to get $18,000 for the Escalade.”

I’d really like to know what year that Escalade is. You have to go back to 2006 to find one in the $18K range around here (at least on cars.com). If we’re talking 2008 – 2009 or later, I’d seriously consider flying up to NYC and driving back.