Rethinking Private-Public Partnership in the Health Care Sector: The Case of Municipal Hospital affiliation

By the late 1950s, New York City's public hospital system-more extensive than any in the nation-was falling apart, with dilapidated buildings and personnel shortages. In response, Mayor Robert Wagner authorized an affiliation plan whereby the city paid private academic medical centers to oversee training programs, administrative tasks, and resource procurement. Affiliation sparked vigorous protest from critics, who saw it as both an incursion on the autonomy of community-oriented public hospitals and the steamrolling of private interests over public ones. In the wake of the New York City fiscal crisis of 1975, however, the viability of a purely public hospital system withered, given the new economic climate facing the city. In its place was a new institutional form: affiliation and the public-private provision of public health care.