Elected Officials Challenge Maimonides CEO to Participate in Town Hall Meeting to Confront Questions on Mismanagment

By Yehudit Garmaise

Did financial mismanagement at Maimonides Medical Center cause dire nurse shortages that have resulted inferior care at the largest hospital in Brooklyn?

In a finely-worded letter to Kenneth Gibbs, Maimonides’ president and CEO, five of South Brooklyn’s most prominent elected officials called “the lack of care Maimonides has provided to [constituents’] families” to be “untenable and unacceptable.”

In the letter, State Sen. Simcha Felder, Assemblymembers Simcha Eichenstein, Robert Carroll, and Marcela Mitaynes, and City Councilman Kalman Yeger, who all said they had “serious concerns about the financial well-being of the hospital, asked Gibbs to join them in a “town-hall style meeting, in which you can engage the public directly.”

The elected officials ask Gibbs to provide them with possible times and dates on which he can meet with them on a weeknight after 5pm.

“We will, of course, coordinate all the details of this town-hall style meeting,” the five officials told Gibbs. “You can simply show up with your team to answer critical questions.”

In early June, many Boro Park residents received in their mailboxes fliers that claimed that Maimonides chairman Gene Klein was to blame for and that the hospital had only a one-star rating, was “losing millions each year” and “on the brink of going broke.”

“Instead of giving out fat raises,” the flier said, “Chairman Gene Klein should fix Maimonides and invest in the hospital.”