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JANUARY 2003

New York City Is Doing Better With Less
by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg

During the current fiscal crisis, City agencies can’t afford to operate at anything less than top efficiency. Over the last year, we’ve met that challenge. We’ve reduced City spending by $2.3 billion. And by making City government more innovative, technologically adept, citizen-friendly and better managed, we’ve improved many services New Yorkers rely on.

Take health care. Under Health and Hospitals Corporation President Dr. Ben Chu, our City’s public hospitals have become national leaders in using technology that improves patient services while also cutting taxpayer costs. Last month, for example, HHC finished installing technology that digitally creates and stores x-ray images at all its facilities.

The effects are nothing short of revolutionary. In the past, it typically took 24 to 48 hours for doctors to retrieve x-ray images for examination. Today, the new Picture Archiving Communications (PACS) system makes such images available within four minutes. The images are sharper and more detailed; PACS also allows doctors throughout the HHC system to review and consult on the same image. By increasing productivity, PACS is expected to save HHC some $11 million annually.

HHC also has instituted the systemwide computerized ordering of prescriptions and lab tests. Test results are now available in hours or, in emergency cases, even minutes. The possibility of errors in prescribing medication has been dramatically reduced. Bottom line: Patients get faster and better treatment at substantially lower costs to the City.

More City services are also available on-line. For example, potential adoptive parents can now use the City’s web site to learn about youngsters in foster care who need permanent, loving homes. Senior citizens can find out about the range of government benefits they qualify for. And in one quick visit to www.nyc.gov/finance, you can pay water bills and property and business taxes, track down a towed automobile, and pay-or contest-parking tickets.

The City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has helped introduce many of these improvements. In addition, by sharing its computer infrastructure with other City agencies, and by revising and renegotiating the City’s telephone service plans, DoITT has saved taxpayers millions of dollars this year.

We’ve instituted other cost-saving efficiencies that don’t require anything more high-tech than a calculator and a sense of basic fairness. Example: The City’s use of vehicles. This year, we’ve taken more than 640 City vehicles off the road and put them on the auction block. We’ve also reduced the number of City parking permits by 30%, and cut their duration in half. This unclogs congested City streets, speeding the flow of traffic. And unless they’re on official business, there’s no reason City vehicles can be parked anyplace while millions of other drivers pay for their parking.

Our public safety agencies have written high-profile success stories this year. Even with 2,000 fewer officers than a year ago, the NYPD has kept crime rates going down, and the FDNY has reduced its response time to fires.

Those aren’t isolated achievements. Many other City agencies are not only doing more with less — they’re doing better with less.#

 

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