Mayor Adams Surges Millions into NYC Hospitals to Address Staffing Shortages

By Yehudit Garmaise

“The greatest city in the world should have the greatest healthcare in the world,” Mayor Eric Adams said this afternoon at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, right before  announcing that millions of dollars are being surged into the city’s public hospitals to pay for the doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and support workers, who are all in short supply right now.

First, Adams announced $27 million that will be provided in loans and funding to support the hospitals that are outside the NYC Health + Hospitals network, which the mayor said “play a vital role in ensuring that there is a safety net that people can rely on and know that they are not going to fall through the system [for a lack of funds.]”

“Those hospitals were on the front lines of COVID, and I see it every day as I move throughout the city.”

A New York City COVID-19 Hospital Loan Fund “will make sure that those hospitals are getting what they need to fight COVID: salaries, protective equipment, testing, and vaccine administration and distribution all over the city,” said the mayor, who explained that these loans have already funded more than 2,400 safety net hospital staff members and served more than 26,000 patients.”

For the funding, Mayor Adams thanked Goldman Sachs, the investment banking company, for its “good community corporate partnership.”

Secondly, Mayor Adams announced, for immediate financial support to address staffing shortages in the city’s H + H hospitals: a $111 million that will partly come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

Third, the mayor will expand staffing and support at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Adams said that he knows many New Yorkers are now saying, “I have my vaccination and my booster shot, and yet I still got COVID.”

“Yes,” Adams answered, “But for the most part: you are home. You are not in the hospital on a ventilator. 

“The numbers are clear: if you are vaccinated and had a booster shot, you are less likely to be hospitalized. And that is the message we must get out there.”

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.