St. Vincent's Hospital In Danger of Closing

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After laying off 180 employees in December, St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village may be in even further danger of closing. The Post reports today that Continuum Health Services—which operates Beth Israel, St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospital—has proposed a plan to take over St. Vincent's. GE Capital and TD Bank hold $300 million of the hospital's current $700 million debt, and both allegedly support the Continuum takeover. But the new ownership would come at a considerable cost to hospital care.

If the plan goes through, all acute care units, including inpatient care and surgical services, would be closed within two to three months. Trauma and emergency services would also be extremely scaled back, leaving St. Vincent's available for ambulatory care, outpatient services, and not much else. St. Vincent's surgeon Dr. Michael Wayne told NY1 "There were over 20,000 surgeries performed here last year, so that's a large volume to assume anywhere." The loss of St. Vincent's would mean the closest hospitals for West Village residents would either be Beth Israel, NYU or Bellvue, all on the east side. District 29 Sen. Tom Duane told the Post "I got to make calls to save them."

The 160-year-old hospital is the last remaining Catholic hospital in the city. Just last year, St. Vincent's got approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to proceed with a $1.6 billion modernization project, which would include tearing down the O'Toole building and replacing it with a new hospital and residential towers. That controversial development would almost certainly be abandoned in any Continuum takeover.

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By Jaya Saxena in News on January 26, 2010 11:27 AM

Comments [rss]

MEDICNYC

Hospital crowding will be incredible at BI, Bellevue, Roosevelt, NYU, and even up to Cornell because SV has a high cancer patient count. In turn, longer triage and turn-around times for ambulances and then longer waits for an ambulance when you call 911. I personally doubt they will close this ER any time soon, though.

NannyState

This sucks. I couldn't imagine going anywhere else after being stabbed.

youngpro

i agree. i see all my doctors there and prefer giving them my business over beth iz or nyu.

suepart

this place is worse than garbage. the staff there are incompetents, and i mean the doctors, not just the usual lower level workers. i will be happy to see the name "St Vincents" removed, as well as all former employees retroactively fined. F this place.

godzuk

i worked for the billing department at st. vincents hospital. if the workers in this department put forth any effort in getting medical claimse paid, st. vincents would not be in the position that it is today. secondary claims we left uncollected, claims for misspelled names, addresses, identification number, etc. we left uncorrected. it was a nightmare working there, nothing would ever get done. As soon as you complained about poor working habits the union got involved. Out source the whole department and st. vincents will survive.

JacqueMehoff

when I worked in billing we had to lie, cheat and steal to make sure we get paid before it goes out to self-pay/collections. no way would my manager let a case go without me having to investigate every friggin type of funding.

single payer would be so much simpler.

MMM510

I believe it has more to do with their assuming the debt for all the other catholic hospitals that closed throughout the boroughs.

JacqueMehoff

How can a hospital that's been around as long as st. vincent's fail? I'm guessing mismanagement and word of mouth from bad patient experiences.

maybe that article in the NYT about their radiation oncology mishap did it?

Living in this city long enough and you'll visit a lot of hospitals. You know which ones are the good ones.

a shame, though.

Spirit of 76

I don't get it. Hospitals should not be in bad shape barring extreme mismanagement. Health care is one of the few growth industries in the nation. People will always get sick.

Mr. Shankly

There's this thing called 'uninsured'.

JacqueMehoff

usually the uninsured goes to the hospital as a last resort and since this is a private hospital they can refuse admission and drop them off at the local HHC facility.

then people like me had to figure a way the bill will get paid.

youngpro

legally speaking, a hospital cannot just close. some hospitals will even run DEEP into debt because the State will not let them close due to the need in a given area.

youngpro

wrong, absolutely wrong. over 75% of all hospital admissions are through the hospital's emergency department, which by law cannot refuse treatment so long as that hospital receives even ONE penny from the federal government (medicare, medicaid, etc.). since 60% of most hospitals' (probably even more in nyc) income comes from these two federal/[ublic programs, it's in their best interest to NOT deny admission.

signed,

your healthcare lawyer

JacqueMehoff

yes, uninsured people CAN go to the emergency room for treatment till stabilized then they can be discharged stable and transferred to a city hospital.

I was talking about inpatient stays. your undocumented which medicaid does not provide for unless it's an emergency can be denied admission.

it happens in California and it happens here.

ed_Extinct

with their history of fuck ups, somehow i am not surprised.

just saying

Yeah, I hear you (even though that's just one of the reasons).

This gem was in the Sunday NY Times--St. Vincent's was treating a man for tongue cancer and mistakenly gave him a fatal radiation overdose:

"As Scott Jerome-Parks lay dying, he clung to this wish: that his fatal radiation overdose — which left him deaf, struggling to see, unable to swallow, burned, with his teeth falling out, with ulcers in his mouth and throat, nauseated, in severe pain and finally unable to breathe —be studied and talked about publicly so that others might not have to live his nightmare."