PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Dr. Liz Jenny, Infectious Disease Doctor at Jacobi Medical Center, on Challenges in NYC Health + Hospitals
3:08:11
ยท
4 min
Dr. Liz Jenny, an infectious disease doctor at Jacobi Medical Center since 1990, shares her perspective on working in the NYC Health + Hospitals system. She discusses the importance of safety net hospitals, the challenges of physician retention, and the changing landscape of healthcare delivery in the face of corporatization.
- Dr. Jenny emphasizes the value of working in public hospitals despite lower salaries, citing the opportunity to make a significant impact on patients' lives.
- She questions the current mission of safety net hospitals and whether they can continue to provide comprehensive care while facing financial pressures.
- Dr. Jenny highlights the unique needs of H+H patients, including time, attention, and addressing multiple vulnerabilities, which may not align with profit-driven healthcare models.
Liz Jenny
3:08:11
Hi.
3:08:12
My name is Liz Jenny.
3:08:13
I'm an infectious disease doctor at Jacobi Medical Center since 1990.
3:08:18
Doctor Katz is absolutely right.
3:08:19
None of us came to h and h to make more money to make money.
3:08:23
I finished my training at Bellevue.
3:08:24
I was offered a job at Jacoby for 66,000 and I think the salary someplace else was 87,000, but it was a great job.
3:08:32
I have no regrets.
3:08:34
I wanted to be free from the constraints of working for corporate medicine, I didn't want to have to think about profit as an incentive.
3:08:43
I truly believed in safety net hospitals as bastions of quality where we could deploy magic bullets that would transform lives.
3:08:52
Just like penicillin and tuberculosis medications were magic bullets earlier in the last century, the job that I took in the HIV clinic was totally transformative.
3:09:03
I didn't go to work there because I had any basic sympathy for the poor and the bedraggled and the disenfranchised and all the other afflictions that lead people to wind up with HIV, but I have to tell you, I learned so much, I became a much better person because of my patients.
3:09:21
So and I'm still living in the same junior four that I lived in when I was a fellow.
3:09:27
So I didn't even know that I was underpaid.
3:09:30
Fast forward to the corporatization of health care in America.
3:09:34
Health care is expensive.
3:09:35
It's too expensive.
3:09:36
It's probably egregiously expensive, and maybe most doctors get paid too much, but that doesn't solve our retention problem.
3:09:44
I cannot get the world to lower the salaries of other doctors in America to fix our retention problem, even though for me, salary is not the issue.
3:09:55
The demands of the public, the expectations of the public, the promise that's made to people of health care is limitless.
3:10:03
And frankly, I think the value of health care is probably a lot less than the cost.
3:10:09
That's my personal opinion.
3:10:11
So I ask, why is New York City in the business of providing health care?
3:10:15
It's really expensive.
3:10:16
Can we afford it?
3:10:18
Or maybe the better question is, what is really the mission of a safety net hospital?
3:10:24
Who are the intended beneficiaries?
3:10:27
Because people with insurance, even people with not so great insurance, have other places to go.
3:10:33
A lot of the people we take care of have no place to go, and they still can benefit from the magic bullets that we have to offer.
3:10:42
And there are many magic bullets, not just HIV drugs, the rheumatology drugs transform lives.
3:10:48
People who can't walk or show their face in public or get through a day without having diarrhea have their lives transformed by these drugs.
3:10:56
So what is our mission?
3:10:59
Is it to provide basic healthcare Or increasingly, is it to provide the kind of health care that reaps a profit?
3:11:07
Because that's where health care is going.
3:11:09
The things that are available are the things that make money.
3:11:13
They're not necessarily the things that our patient needs.
3:11:16
I know what my patients need.
3:11:18
They need time, attention, love.
3:11:22
I have a whole list of things and our patients are vulnerable.
Mercedes Narcisse
3:11:26
You can share with us, but the time Anyway,
Liz Jenny
3:11:30
maybe I've gone over my 2 minutes.
3:11:32
Our patients have, you know, many disabilities, the patients that are seen preferentially in the public hospital system, cognitive, functional, language, literacy, psychiatric, insurance, etc.
3:11:45
It takes a lot of time to take care of these patients.
3:11:48
It's not necessarily profitable, but it does a lot of good.
3:11:52
And I hope somehow we can solve this problem so that we can maintain a safety net and a mission, and we can still provide the services that our patients need.
3:12:03
Our system is gridlocked.
3:12:05
I cannot make a referral anywhere, in my system.
3:12:09
And, I don't have a watch, so I won't go on anymore.
Mercedes Narcisse
3:12:12
It been over, but I was just listening.