CONDITION CRITICAL:
The Absence of Latinos Among Policymakers
in New York City’s Voluntary Hospitals
by Annette Fuentes

(New York: PRLDEF, December 2004), 66 pages

To download a copy of the full report as a PDF file, go to:
http://www.prldef.org/lib/Condition_Critical.pdf

Key Findings
● Six of 13 New York City voluntary hospitals surveyed had no Latinos on their boards of trustees; one hospital had two Latino members (representing only 2% of their trustees) and two hospitals had one Latino member (1% of trustees).
● One of 13 hospitals had a Latino president/CEO; the same hospital had Latinos in 33% of its senior management positions.
● 12 of 13 hospitals had no Latinos in any senior management positions.
● The Greater New York Hospital Association and the Healthcare Association of New York, the two largest industry lobbying/trade groups, had just one Latino each on their boards of trustees, representing 3% and 2% of members, respectively.
● The Greater New York Hospital Association this spring failed to meet the Equal Employment Opportunity standards of the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, a GNYHA member, because of lack of diversity in 7 of 20 job categories among staff.

Latinos Face Multiple Barriers to Care
● Hospitals routinely fail to follow regulations on providing language interpreter services for Spanish-speaking patients and others with limited English proficiency
● Hospitals fail to provide written materials, such as financial forms, in patients’ language
● Hospitals receive millions in state funds to care for the uninsured but fail to inform patients such assistance is available
● Many hospitals maintain a dual system of care in their specialty practices – a clinic system for poor with resident doctors, and a private practice with attending physicians
● Hospitals serve low percentages of uninsured patients despite regulatory and legal mandates to serve all regardless of ability to pay; Public hospitals continue to be safety net providers for the uninsured and immigrant populations.

This report was developed by the PRLDEF Institute for Puerto Rican Policy and was funded in large part by a grant from the WK Kellogg Foundation.