BEHAVIORAL HEALTH: New York state made $3.5 million available on Thursday to cover startup funds for 13 new Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, part of the state’s effort to triple the number of facilities statewide. The clinics, which are overseen by the Department of Health, the Office of Mental Health and the Office of Addiction Services and Supports, provide mental health and substance use treatment for New Yorkers at bundled rates that cover the costs of care to providers. The clinics serve 63,000 New Yorkers annually.
ALOPECIA GRANT: The National Institutes of Health awarded $6.6 million to researchers at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine to study a new pediatric treatment for alopecia, a disease that causes hair loss. The five-year grant will enable the researchers to explore whether the monoclonal antibody dupilumab is safe and effective to treat children with extensive alopecia areata, defined as hair loss making up 30% of the scalp.
CEO SEARCH: The board of Central Brooklyn safety-net health system One Brooklyn Health hired the search firm Korn Ferry to conduct a national search for the health system’s new CEO, the organization said Thursday. The search continues after the board quietly voted out the health system’s inaugural CEO LaRay Brown last fall, a vote that ultimately led one board member to file a lawsuit against the board and its chairman.
A $28 million state-sponsored homeless outreach program placed 450 New Yorkers living on the streets and in the subway system into stable housing or long-term care since it launched two years ago, state data shows.
The Safe Options Support program had roughly 27,000 encounters with homeless New Yorkers, 450 of which have resulted in housing placements, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Thursday. In addition to housing placements, the program connected 300 New Yorkers with emergency medical, psychiatric or substance use disorder care.
Hochul launched the outreach program in 2022 as a part of her $1 billion mental health initiative, a focus of which is getting homeless individuals into housing and mental health care. The state has invested $28 million into New York City’s program since it launched, $21 million of which was allocated this year alone.
The program, administered by the Office of Mental Health, was launched to engage with a subset of 4,000 homeless individuals in New York City who were identified by agencies such as the public hospital system, the health department and homeless services.
The program deploys teams of registered nurses, behavioral health clinicians and peer specialists to canvass across four boroughs, frequenting places where homeless New Yorkers gather until they are able to make contact and connect them with food, counseling and ultimately, stable housing.
New York City has 14 homeless outreach teams, but the state has launched seven additional teams that engage with homeless populations throughout the Hudson Valley, the Capital Region, the Finger Lakes and Long Island.
New York state deploys other homeless outreach programs such as Subway Co-Response teams, which Hochul allocated $20 million to earlier this year. The Safe Options Support teams, however, provide intensive services over a 12-month period and serve the chronically homeless population.
Uber has announced a new platform to help caregivers facilitate transportation for those they care for. The move also further expands the company’s footprint in the health care space.
The new offering, unveiled on Wednesday at the company’s annual product event, allows caregivers to request and monitor rides and deliveries of prescriptions, groceries and over-the-counter items for those they care for. In the coming months, Uber said it will start to partner with Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial plans to reimburse consumers for the cost. No additional costs will be passed on to the consumer, according to Caitlin Donovan, global head of Uber Health.
The company declined to comment on its projected revenue from the new product.
There are an estimated 4.1 million caregivers in New York state, according to the state Department of Health. Fifty percent of caregivers nationwide said caregiving increased their level of emotional stress, while more than one-third said it affected their physical feelings of stress, according to research from AARP.
This isn’t Uber’s first attempt to crack the health care market. In 2018, Uber Health launched to allow health plans and providers to use the platform to coordinate non-emergency transportation. The move was an attempt to offset no-shows at appointments; more than 20% of patients missed necessary care due to transportation access issues, according to a study conducted by Princeton-based nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Today, there are more than 3,000 health plans and providers that use Uber Health to arrange patient transportation, according to Donovan.
Last fall, the firm also partnered with Chapter, a Greenwich Village-based Medicare navigation startup to help Medicare Advantage enrollees maximize their benefits.
The moves are part of a growing trend in which insurance companies increasingly reimburse not just medical providers, but other services that can positively influence social determinants of health — non-medical factors such as economic stability, education and access to transit – that often have an outsize impact on health outcomes.
New York state has $7.5 billion allocated towards its Medicaid 1115 waiver, a federally-approved amendment to the public health program that changes how it pays for health-related social needs, such as transportation, nutrition and even rent.
Bill Hwang has an unlikely ally as he tries to stay out of prison.
Frank Carone — a longtime adviser to Mayor Eric Adams — has fashioned himself as a power broker straddling the worlds of city government and the businesses it regulates. Now, he has pulled himself into the orbit of Hwang — who was an unassuming financier before a $36 billion blowup led to the prospect of life behind bars.
Carone, a key cog in the city’s Democratic machine, said he has been advising Hwang, and even encouraged him last year to overhaul his legal team to fight charges of market manipulation, fraud and racketeering.
Hwang then brought in a new defense team led by Barry Berke, a prominent attorney who most famously led the effort for House and Senate Democrats to impeach former president Donald Trump.
A representative for Hwang declined to comment.
“I have a large Rolodex and making relationships is a major part of my life,” Carone said on Wednesday about how he connected with Hwang. “There’s always someone who knows someone.”
The former chief of staff to Adams said he hosted Hwang at the Core Club — one of New York City’s exclusive private members’ clubs. “We met for breakfast and I was struck by Bill’s candor,” he said. “I was taken by the man.”
Carone was speaking from Italy, where he accompanied Adams on the mayor’s recent visit to Rome and the Vatican.
The Adams confidant has fashioned himself as a gatekeeper to the mayor and reset the ways of City Hall. Carone helped Adams cultivate an accessible, at times cozy, relationship with the New York business community.
He had been a longtime lawyer for the Brooklyn County Democratic party, and has even acted as Adams’ personal attorney. The mayor relied heavily on Carone for administration picks and setting policy priorities.
He left the Adams administration after about a year to start his own consulting firm that touts his “uncanny ability to facilitate these public-private partnerships.”
The case against Hwang — rigging markets with the use of complicated swaps — is a world away from the type of cases that cemented Carone’s legal credentials in the city: matrimonial disputes, insurance claims for cab companies and tiffs between real estate developers.
“Part of what I do as a strategist is to navigate complex legal issues,” Carone says of his role with Hwang. “Just know I’m doing it as a strategist, not a lawyer.”
The City Council on Thursday approved three different rezonings in Brooklyn that would create more than 300 apartments altogether.
The largest project, 281-311 Marcus Garvey Blvd., would consist of a pair of 9-story buildings on opposite sides of the same street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, containing 155 units combined — all of which would be affordable.
Built by Paths Development (formerly known as Omni), the mixed-use project would also include commercial space, a boxing gym and medical offices. It is an infill project, being built on the campuses of the existing block-long Evers Apartments and Betty Shabazz Apartments.
Another rezoning, at 1289 Atlantic Ave. in the same neighborhood, will result in a fully affordable 14-story building with 112 apartments, overlooking the Nostrand Avenue Long Island Rail Road station. The developer, Joseph Atarien of Atari Realty, would also build ground-floor commercial and community space, as well as 39 off-street parking spots.
Finally, a 9-story building at 817 Avenue H in Midwood would produce 42 apartments — 11 of which would be affordable. The developer is the Agudist Council of Greater New York, an Orthodox Jewish group.
All three projects advanced with the support of the local council members — Chi Ossé for the Bed-Stuy developments and Farah Louis in Midwood. Speaker Adrienne Adams’ approach has largely preserved the practice of “member deference,” which gives lawmakers virtual veto power over projects in their districts, despite speculation that the tradition might end as the city’s housing shortage worsens.
But Speaker Adams has nonetheless pushed for the approval of a few major developments, and enacted a law last year that aims to spread new construction more evenly among neighborhoods by setting growth targets and studying each area’s housing needs.
The Atlantic Avenue project required a rezoning because it sits on what is otherwise a manufacturing-only site, while the two others needed zoning changes to add greater density.
“This is an emergency and we have to tackle the shortage without delay, which is why I’m excited about these two projects,” Ossé said at a hearing on the rezonings earlier this month.
The Atlantic Avenue project approved Thursday sits just outside the 13-block area being eyed for a rezoning by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, which would pave the way for some 4,000 new homes in what is currently a manufacturing-only area.
Councilwoman Crystal Hudson, who represents much of that area, persuaded her fellow lawmakers to reject a different nine-story project in February that sat within that zone. Although the developers said their project followed the same framework as the neighborhood-wide plan, Hudson argued it would be premature to approve an individual development ahead of the broader rezoning.
Of course, permitting new projects and actually building them are different questions. Multiple developers in recent weeks have said the state’s new 485-x tax break for affordable developments is not generous enough for their projects to pencil out financially. Among them was Two Trees executive David Lombino, who told Crain’s that the company’s major River Ring project in Williamsburg is “not feasible” in the current high-interest rate environment.