New York (State). Blue Ribbon Panel on Municipal Hospitals of New York City.

During a 1965 site investigation of nursing staff shortages by the Joint Legislative Committee on Problems of Public Health, Medicare, and Medicaid, State Senator Seymour R. Thaler observed poor medical care, understaffing, and waste in New York City's municipal hospitals. His efforts to publicize his findings and to involve state government in seeking remedies prompted Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller to appoint an investigatory panel of distinguished health care experts. The members of this Blue Ribbon Panel were hospital administrators, university public health and medical school faculty, and citizen activists.

The Blue Ribbon Panel met six times between October, 1966 and March, 1967 to collect information from people with knowledge about or responsibility for the municipal hospitals. The testimony served as evidence for the investigatory panel's recommendations on how the state's licensing and financial authority could hasten improvement of the hospitals' physical plant, administration, financial management, and quality of medical care. The panel issued a final report and recommendations in April, 1967. Its recommendations influenced Executive legislative proposals for health insurance and construction loan funds in the following session; its findings contributed to more extensive investigations by the New York City Comptroller, the Mayor's Commission on the Delivery of Personal Health Services, the state Department of Health, and the Temporary State Commission on Investigation.