Wall St.Journal 27Feb2020

A10B| Thursday, February 27, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

GREATERNEWYORKWATCH

NEW JERSEY

Driver Gets 10 Years

In Fatal Bus Crash

The driver of a school bus

that veered across Interstate 80

in New Jersey after missing an

exit and crashed into a dump

truck, killing a teacher and a stu-

dent and injuring dozens more,

was sentenced Wednesday to

10 years in prison.

Hudy Muldrow, 79 years old,

had pleaded guilty in December

to reckless vehicular homicide,

assault by auto and child endan-

germent in connection with the

May 2018 crash in Mount Olive.

The bus carrying students

and teachers from a Paramus

middle school merged onto the

highway and then headed across

three lanes toward a median

turnaround limited to official ve-

hicles. The impact of the crash

sheared the bus’s frame from its

wheelbase. Social studies

teacher Jennifer Williamson-Ken-

nedy, 51, and fifth-grade student

Miranda Vargas, 10, were killed.

Wednesday’s sentencing took

place in a courtroom packed

with the two victims’ friends

and relatives.

Mr. Muldrow apologized in a

brief statement to the court.

—Associated Press

NEW YORK CITY

Reckless Motorists

Could Lose Vehicles

New York City drivers who get

five camera-issued red light tick-

ets or 15 camera-issued speeding

tickets in a 12-month period will

have to take a traffic safety

course or risk losing their vehicles

under a bill signed by Mayor Bill

de Blasio on Wednesday.

“We are putting all drivers on

notice that if you behave reck-

lessly behind the wheel, there

will be real consequences,” said

Mr. de Blasio, who joined other

city officials and traffic-safety

advocates at a ceremony.

The law will take effect on

Feb. 26, 2021, and will apply to

tickets incurred after Oct. 26 of

this year. The vehicles of drivers

who exceed the ticket limit may

be impounded unless the motor-

ists take a safe-driving course

overseen by the city Transporta-

tion Department.

City officials estimate that

the new law will affect about

3,000 to 6,000 vehicles, a frac-

tion of the nearly two million ve-

hicles registered in the city. The

mayor and City Council will de-

cide after three years whether

to renew the law.

—Associated Press

merged with larger health sys-

tems might face the most se-

vere reductions, while academic

medical centers are spared.

For NYU Langone Brooklyn,

the cuts would be around $

million, according to Mr.

Cuomo’s office.

“Clearly, these cuts will de-

crease the bottom line at NYU

Langone-Brooklyn,” said Dr.

Brotman. “We will do our best

to manage expenses without

damaging programs.”

NYU Langone and the then-

Brooklyn Lutheran Medical

Center began conversations

about working together more

than a dozen years ago, set-

tling on an affiliation in 2015.

NYU Langone was shopping for

a partner in Brooklyn because

so many of the patients for its

main hospital came from the

borough. At the time, Brooklyn

Lutheran was losing between

$10 million and $30 million a

year, according to Dr. Brotman.

Many other institutions in

the region were looking to ac-

ademic medical centers at that

time to be their bank and pay

for the creation of programs

for complicated medical proce-

dures that make up about 5%

of patient care, Dr. Brotman

said. NYU Langone, however,

wanted a partner that had a

large ambulatory footprint.

“Our philosophy is that’s

where the action is in terms of

developing a patient base,” Dr.

Brotman said.

To achieve the quality NYU

Langone desired, it has cost

about $70 million to $76 mil-

lion more in expenses annu-

ally, hospital officials esti-

mated. Even with that added

expense, the hospital breaks

even, Dr. Brotman said.

The added expenses went

to overhaul several compo-

nents of the hospital, includ-

ing a new electronic health-re-

cords system, and efforts to

improve billing.

The hospital eliminated

most of the outsourced pro-

grams and itinerant doctors

and hired about 150 new staff

doctors. The hires included

neurologists and spine doc-

tors, which increased the num-

ber of those cases from 25 to

250 in two years.

A focus was put on emer-

gency department care, the

entry point for about half of

patients, said Bret Rudy, exec-

utive hospital director and se-

nior vice president of NYU

Langone Hospital-Brooklyn.

Before the partnership, about

25% of patients coming to the

Sunset Park emergency room

were admitted to the hospital.

Now it is 15% of patients, Dr.

Rudy said.

Overall there has been a 5%

to 7% increase in the number

of people using the hospital’s

emergency department, said

Dr. Rudy, and wait times to see

a provider have dropped to

about 13 minutes.

At the hospital, which is li-

censed for 444 beds, there has

been an overall 7% increase in

volume, said Dr. Rudy.

A new cancer facility was

opened, doubling the capacity

for cancer care. The system

hired more surgeons. An inte-

grated team for breast-cancer

care is now in place.

The hospital also over-

hauled its labor-and-delivery

unit, adding a 24/7 doctor fo-

cused solely on patient safety

and quality of care. The num-

ber of babies delivered has

gone from roughly 3,320 a

year to 4,300.

Still, said Dr. Brotman, some

patients have to be persuaded

that the care in Brooklyn is

comparable to Manhattan. “It’s

OK, you don’t have to go to

Manhattan. As a matter of fact,

sometimes it’s a zoo,” he said.

It has taken three years and

more than $350 million for

NYU Langone Health to break

even with its satellite hospital

in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Now,

the health system is ready to

expand there, with a new, $

million patient-room tower.

During the past decade and

more, New York’s larger, elite

health systems moved into

Brooklyn, Westchester County

and elsewhere to expand their

footprints and attract new pa-

tients. Many took on debt, the

aging buildings and boilers of

the safety-net hospitals some

of them absorbed and patients

who rely heavily on Medicare

and Medicaid.

How and when these sys-

tems achieve a return on their

investment has been an open

question.

“When you have something

that’s been neglected, and you

start either making a little

money or at least breaking

even so that you can take on

some debt, we tend to do

that,” said Andrew Brotman,

NYU Langone’s senior vice

president and vice dean for

clinical affairs and strategy.

NYU Langone Hospital-

Brooklyn faces some of the

same headwinds of other hos-

pitals in the area.

Some 95% of its patients

are on Medicare and Medicaid,

and the hospital receives reim-

bursements that don’t fully

cover the cost of care.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned

earlier this week that health-

care systems in New York will

face some $8 billion in federal

cuts to Medicaid.

Experts have cautioned that

the safety-net hospitals in

Brooklyn and elsewhere that

BYMELANIEGRAYCEWEST

A Hospital Grows in Brooklyn:

Inside NYU Langone’s Expansion

NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn overhauled its labor-and-delivery unit. Below, Dr. George Fernaine, chief of cardiology, at work.

AGATON STROM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (2)

three boys arrested in the inci-

dent, was charged as a minor

with murder in the second de-

gree and robbery in the first

degree. He has denied the

charges through his attorneys.

The two other boys, both

14, have been charged with

murder as adults. They have

pleaded not guilty.

Police have said the teens

killed Ms. Majors as she strug-

gled with them during an at-

tempted robbery of her cell-

phone. In one video clip from

the interrogation of the 13-

year-old, the boy tells the de-

tective he was standing behind

his two friends.

“She was probably refusing

to give it to them, and then

they got mad,” the boy said.

“And then they probably took

it from her.”

“If you lie, that’s when you

get in serious trouble, OK?”

the detective told him.

At another point, the detec-

tive encouraged the teen to be

honest: “It’s for your own

good, buddy, trust me.”

In response to questions

from Ms. Kaplan, Detective

Acevedo said he didn’t give

the teen a written form of the

Miranda warning or ask if he

wanted one, and that he didn’t

check to make sure the boy

understood the meaning of the

verbal version by having him

explain it in his own words.

Miranda warnings state

that a suspect has the right to

remain silent and have a law-

yer present.

A New York Police Depart-

ment detective who interro-

gated a 13-year-old charged in

the slaying of a Barnard Col-

lege student testified Wednes-

day that he misled the teen to

get information from him.

The comments came at a

pretrial hearing for the boy,

who is accused of a role in the

fatal stabbing of 18-year-old

Tessa Majors in Manhattan’s

Morningside Park on Dec. 11.

In state family court, de-

fense lawyer Hannah Kaplan

showed video clips from the

teen’s interrogation at Man-

hattan’s 26th Precinct by New

York Police Department Detec-

tive Wilfredo Acevedo the day

after the stabbing. The teen’s

uncle, who is his legal guard-

ian, was present, but the boy

had no lawyer.

Ms. Kaplan, a Legal Aid So-

ciety lawyer, sought to show

that, to get the teen to talk,

the detective misled him by

saying police already knew

more about the incident than

they actually did.

During the interrogation,

the detective told the teen that

he knew of surveillance video

from the park at the time of

the incident and knew what

clothing the teen was wearing.

On Wednesday, Detective

Acevedo testified he had no such

information at the time and ac-

knowledged misleading the boy.

The 13-year-old, one of

BYLESLIEBRODY

ANDBENCHAPMAN

DetectiveSaysHe

Misled Barnard Suspect

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