New York State Department of Health

The New York State Department of Health is the department of the New York state government responsible for public health. It promotes the prevention and control of disease, environmental health, healthy lifestyles, and emergency preparedness and response; supervises local health boards; oversees reporting and vital records; conducts surveillance of hospitals; does research at the Wadsworth Center; and administers several other health insurance programs and institutions. Its regulations are compiled in title 10 of the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations.

New York State Department of Health
Department overview

Formed	February 19, 1901 (1901-02-19)
Jurisdiction	New York
Headquarters	Albany, NY
Department executive	James V. McDonald M.D., M.P.H., Commissioner (Appointed June 9, 2023)
Key document	Public Health Law
Website	www.health.ny.gov

Infrastructure

New York State relies on a county-based system for delivery of public health services. 58 local health departments offer core services including assessing community health, disease control and prevention, family health, and health education; 37 localities provide environmental health services, while the other 21 rely on the state's Department of Health.

At the local level, public health workers are found not only in local health agencies but also in private and nonprofit organizations concerned with the public's health. The most common professional disciplines are physicians, nurses, environmental specialists, laboratorians, health educators, disease investigators, outreach workers, and managers, as well as other allied health professions. Nurses represented 22% of the localities' workforce (and 42% of full-time equivalent workers in rural localities), scientific/investigative staff represented 22%–27% of the workforce, support staff represented 28%, education/outreach staff represented 10%, and physicians represented 1%. In 2018 the Department of Health had over 3300 personnel in its central office, three regional offices, three field offices and nine district health offices, and an additional 1400 personnel in its five healthcare institutions.

Public health

The New York State Department of Health, through the Public Health Law and State Sanitary Code, supervises and enforces statewide standards for communicable disease control, nuisance abatement, sanitation, and emergency response, exercising reserve police powers and regulatory authority while overseeing local health officers and coordinating with federal agencies to preserve and protect public health.

Facility regulation

The commissioner is the executive enforcement authority over Article 28 healthcare facilities—conducting inspections, determining Medicaid necessity/appropriateness, administering patient-rights and public reporting systems, promulgating specified regulations, and imposing penalties and other compliance actions. Subject to the commissioner's approval, the Public Health and Health Planning Council (PHHPC) is a quasi-legislative authority that adopts and amends the State Sanitary Code, promulgates Article 28 regulations establishing operating-certificate standards, reporting and accounting systems, hospital classification and cost-finding methodologies, reimbursement and rate-setting frameworks, and penalty systems for residential health care facilities, and also exercises authority over the certificate of need process.

The certificate of need (CON) process is a regulatory mechanism used to oversee the establishment, construction, renovation, and major equipment acquisition of healthcare facilities. The CON process aims to control health care costs and prevent duplicative services by ensuring new investments meet a community need. New York's CON requirements are among the most extensive in the nation, covering all six major categories of health services: hospital beds, non-hospital beds, medical equipment, new facilities, new services, and even emergency medical transport, and New York is unique in applying CON laws to dentists' offices.

The department enforces nurse staffing transparency and planning by requiring Article 28 hospitals and nursing homes to disclose unit-level staffing and nursing-sensitive outcome metrics on request, while general hospitals must maintain nurse-led clinical-staffing committees that annually file and implement unit- and shift-specific staffing plans, incorporating acuity, skill-mix and service-specific minimums (e.g., ICU/CCU, OR, perinatal, burn, PICU, transplant), including a 1:2 RN-to-patient minimum in ICU/critical care.

Financing

To help offset financial losses from serving Medicaid and uninsured patients, disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments are distributed through multiple mechanisms. These include the Health Care Reform Act (HCRA)-funded Indigent Care Pool and adjustments for hospitals, DSH intergovernmental transfers for public hospitals, and DSH payments to Institutes for Mental Disease (IMDs). The Indigent Care Pool (ICP) is intended to help cover hospitals' costs from providing charity care and from unpaid bills classified as bad debt, in addition to their Medicaid shortfalls. Hospitals receive ICP reimbursements for debt even as they collect the same debt from patients, since nothing in the law requires them to credit patient accounts. As of 2018, hospitals received about $1.1 billion per year in ICP funds.

State directed payments (SDPs) allow states to require Medicaid managed care plans to pay providers at specific rates or using defined methods — such as uniform payment increases, minimum fee schedules, or value-based payment models — in addition to the base payment rates negotiated between plans and providers. New York's Directed Payment Template programs (DPTs) include value-based payment initiatives such as population-based payments for patient-centered medical home providers. They also include enhanced reimbursements for safety net, critical access, and sole community facilities, as well as for NYC Health + Hospitals' outpatient services. These payments are delivered through higher capitation rates paid to managed care plans, with the nonfederal share financed by state general funds, HCRA provider taxes, and intergovernmental transfers.

Workforce development

The Health Department's State Board for Professional Medical Conduct and Office of Professional Medical Conduct are responsible for investigating and adjudicating complaints against physicians, physician assistants, and specialist assistants. The Education Department's State Board for Medicine advises on licensing, practice standards, and professional conduct for physicians and physician assistants. The Health Department licenses the practice of radiography, radiation therapy, and nuclear medicine technology. It also certifies first responders, EMTs, advanced EMTs, and ambulance services. And it licenses the manufacture, distribution, import, export, institutional dispensing, institutional dispensing limited, conducting of research, instructional activities, or chemical analysis of or with controlled substances. Other unlicensed assistive personnel such as certified nurse aides, feeding assistants, personal care aides, and home health aides are not licensed but are governed through department–approved training, competency evaluation, and registry frameworks. The Education Department and its boards regulate the other allied health professions.

New York funds graduate medical education (GME) through the department with hospital rate add-ons, HCRA-based GME and professional education pool supplemental payments, and administering programs like Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program (ECRIP) and Doctors Across New York (DANY). New York accounted for nearly half of the nation's total state Medicaid GME spending—$1.82 billion of the total $3.87 billion in 2012—and more than 10 times any other state.

Health information

The Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY, pronounced "shiny") is a health information exchange that allows healthcare providers to access and share patient data, managed by the nonprofit New York eHealth Collaborative. There are several regional health information organizations such as Hixny.

The All-Payer Database (APD) is the state all-payer claims database administered by the department. All-payer claims databases (APCDs) are large state databases that include medical billing claims, pharmacy claims, dental claims, and eligibility and provider files collected from private and public payers to advance the goal of improving health care affordability, efficiency, and cost transparency.

The Health Commerce System (HCS) is the web portal that serves as the primary communications, reporting, and credentialing platform between the department and health facilities, providers, and local public health authorities. It includes a number of applications, such as the Health Emergency Response Data System (HERDS) for emergency and routine data collection, the Integrated Health Alerting and Notification System (IHANS) for urgent alerts and guidelines, the New York State Immunization Information System (NYSIIS) for vaccine records, and eCLEP for Wadsworth Center lab reporting.

History

In 1866, the state legislature passed the Metropolitan Health Law and established the NYC Metropolitan Board of Health, and in 1870 the legislature replaced it with the NYC Department of Health. The State Board of Health was created 18 May 1880 by the 103rd Legislature. The State Department of Health and its commissioner were created by an act of 19 February 1901 of the 124th Legislature, superseding the board.

The earliest New York state laws regarding public health were quarantine laws for the port of New York, first passed by the New York General Assembly in 1758. The 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic precipitated the 1799–1800 creation of the New York Marine Hospital, and in 1801 its resident physician and the health officers of the port were constituted as the New York City board of health. The 1826–1837 cholera pandemic precipitated further legislation. In 1847 a law mandated civil registration of vital events (births, marriages, and deaths). The 1881–1896 cholera pandemic further caused an expansion of its powers to compel reporting and to perform the duties of local boards of health.

The certificate of need (CON) requirement was created by New York in 1964. In 1965 the department was given central responsibility over hospitals and related facilities. 2010 state budget legislation abolished the Public Health Council and the State Hospital Review and Planning Council and consolidated their functions into the newly created Public Health and Health Planning Council (PHHPC). The Nursing Care Quality Protection Act was amended in 2021 requiring general hospitals to establish clinical staffing committees to develop and oversee clinical staffing plans, to include specific nurse-to-patient ratios for each unit and work shift.

The state implemented Medicaid in 1966 and designated the state Department of Social Services (DSS) as the "single state agency" but required it to contract with the Health Department. The Social Services Department and local social districts were responsible for eligibility determinations and paying claims, while the Health Department and local health districts were responsible for settings standards (including fees schedules) and supervising and surveilling providers. Oversight of adult homes, enriched housing programs, residences for adults, assisted living programs, and public homes (other than shelters for adults) were transferred from DSS by the Welfare Reform Act of 1997. In 2012, the Health Department started assuming administrative responsibilities for Medicaid from the counties.

By 1970 the state began to regulate health insurance reimbursement rates, in 1983 began all-payer rate setting, and by 1986-1988 had moved to a case-based system. In 1982–1983 the state overhauled the hospital reimbursement system by imposing revenue caps, creating regional bad debt and charity care pools, and shifting all payors into a uniform prospective payment methodology (NYPHRM I). In 1987 the New York State Council on Graduate Medical Education was created by executive order. In 1988 the state established a mandatory DRG-based case payment system for all payors, continued bad debt and charity pools through payor add-ons and revenue assessments, provided direct and indirect cost reimbursements for graduate medical education, added quality protections and HMO negotiation authority, and aimed to curb hospital cost growth (NYPHRM III). In 1996 these were replaced by the current Health Care Reform Act (HCRA), allowing negotiated reimbursement rates and establishing tax funding for public goods like graduate medical education, charity care, and public health. The Health Care Reform Act of 2000 (HCRA 2000) was a major extension and modification that made significant changes to how New York State funded hospitals, subsidized care for the uninsured, and managed health insurance programs. In 2006 the Hospital Financial Assistance Law (HFAL or Manny's Law) was enacted requiring hospitals to adopt and publicize uniform financial assistance policies, including income-based limits on charges, sliding-scale discounts, reasonable payment terms, and restrictions on aggressive collections, as a condition for receiving ICP payments.

List of commissioners

Name	Dates in Office	Governors Served	Comments
Daniel Lewis	March 6, 1901 – Early 1905	Benjamin B. Odell, Jr.	Previously was President of the State Board of Health, which became the Department of Health, and served out full term
Eugene H. Porter	May 1905 – Early 1914	Frank W. Higgins, Charles Evans Hughes, Horace White, John Alden Dix, William Sulzer, Martin H. Glynn	Served out his term
Hermann M. Biggs	January 19, 1914 – June 28, 1923	Martin H. Glynn, Charles S. Whitman, Alfred E. Smith, Nathan L. Miller	Died while serving
Matthias Nicoll Jr.	July 12, 1923 – January 11, 1930	Alfred E. Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt	Resigned to become Commissioner of the Westchester County (New York) Department of Health
Thomas J. Parran, Jr.	March 5, 1930 – May 6, 1936	Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert Lehman	Resigned to become Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service
Edward S. Godfrey	April 21, 1936 – May 1, 1947	Herbert Lehman, Charles Poletti, Thomas E. Dewey	Retired
Herman E. Hilleboe	July 1, 1947 – January 7, 1963	Thomas E. Dewey, W. Averell Harriman, Nelson A. Rockefeller	Became head of the Division of Public Health Practice at the Columbia University School of Public Health
Hollis S. Ingraham	January 7, 1963? – January 2, 1975	Nelson A. Rockefeller	Served out full term
Robert P. Whalen	January 2, 1975 – April 29, 1975 (acting) April 29, 1975 – December 31,1978	Hugh Carey	Resigned to become Vice chairman of the New York State Health Planning Commission
David Axelrod	January 1, 1979 – May 12, 1991	Hugh Carey, Mario M. Cuomo	Resigned after a severe stroke
Lorna McBarnette	February 25, 1991 – June 9, 1992	Mario M. Cuomo	Acting
Mark R. Chassin	June 9, 1992 – December 31, 1994	Mario M. Cuomo	Served out full term
Barbara Ann DeBuono	Early February 1995 – November 1, 1998	George E. Pataki	Resigned to become an executive in the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System
Dennis P. Whalen	November 1, 1998 – June 15, 1999	George E. Pataki	Acting
Antonia C. Novello	June 15, 1999 – December 31, 2006	George E. Pataki	Served out full term
Richard F. Daines	February 2007 – December 31, 2010	Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson	Served out full term
Nirav R. Shah	January 24, 2011 – May 4, 2014	Andrew Cuomo	Resigned to become chief operating officer at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California
Howard A. Zucker	May 4, 2014 – May 5, 2015 (acting) May 5, 2015 – December 1, 2021	Andrew Cuomo, Kathy Hochul	Part of Governor Cuomo and Hochul's COVID-19 task force during the pandemic
Mary T. Bassett	December 1, 2021 – January 1, 2023	Kathy Hochul	Part of Governor Hochul's COVID-19 task force during the pandemic
James V. McDonald	January 1, 2023 – June 9, 2023 (acting) June 9, 2023 – current	Kathy Hochul	Current commissioner