Mount Sinai Beth Israel officials are expected to make an announcement soon "that it will cut its inpatient capacity after the hospital lost hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two years," Crain's reports.
This announcement is expected within the next two weeks, based on a message sent to union members by the New York State Nurses Association, per Crain's.
The timing comes after a report in the current issue of The Villager, which, citing three anonymous nurses, reported that the facility would be closing.
According to Crain's, top Mount Sinai officials refuted that story in an email sent to faculty, staff and students... a copy which Crain's republished:
“We are well aware of the understandable stress and confusion that has been caused by an inaccurate story in today’s Villager newspaper. We are working on a plan which will enhance existing services and develop new facilities in the Mount Sinai Beth Israel community. In the meantime, there will be no disruption in any of our patient care services.”
However, as Crain's pointed out, the email doesn't directly address whether the 856-bed teaching hospital will downsize.
As Gothamist noted: "since St. Vincent's Hospital shuttered in 2010, following a series of increasing layoffs, there have been just a handful of hospitals serving Lower Manhattan, the largest being Mount Sinai Beth Israel" at First Avenue and East 16th Street.
The former St. Vincent's is on its way to becoming a luxury condo complex called Greenwich Lane.
Imagine what developers would pay for Mount Sinai Beth Israel ... with its views of Stuyvesant Square Park off Second Avenue..
33 comments:
Now I know how those who relied on St. Vincent's felt. I think this is really bad news as my insurance focuses on mt sinai beth israel and I live in Chelsea. My primary care is Mt. Sinai affiliated. This will be a real inconvenience. Just went there for an outpatient thing.
Perhaps they could turn the building into a fro yo/artisanal coffee/rolled or unrolled ice cream/bakery/nail salon/bank branch/designer cocktail/drugstore, since those things are obviously the only services the new rulers of New York want any more, and this way they could have them all under one roof. Because realy, who needs something as unimportant as a hospital when there's empty calories to be had?
Mount Sinai has one billion reasons to drive the hospital into the ground and sell it for real estate.
Details (such as where one goes during an emergency or illness) don't exist in the new condo sanitized NY. Lower Manhattan is a playground. Just don't get hurt or sick. (And forget getting old or dying. That's for Riverdale?)
I don't buy Mt. Sinai's denials that they aren't in the midst of a major real estate transaction. Since taking over Beth Israel they have transferred the most profitable hospital services uptown, forced many doctors out, and suddenly lost close to $100 million last year.
When Mayor DeBlasio came into office and St. Vincent's was being sold off to developers, he promised there would be no more major hospital closures like the 12 hospitals that closed down under Bloomberg. Now we learn that City Hall was informed about this downsizing last year, and there's not a peep from our Mayor.
Here's why this deal is different from other closures: Beth Israel is the largest hospital in the area, with more beds than NYU and Bellevue, and with three times more ER visits than NYU had last year at 150,000. It is the primary hospital that services lower Manhattan, the West Vilage, Chinatown and Downtown Brooklyn, and if it closes or downsizes this is bad news for everyone.
And don't forget, Beth Israel was the only hospital in the area to remain open after Hurricane Sandy, while the VA, Bellevue and NYU were all flooded and had to shut down for many months while repairing billions of dollars in damage.
That entire corridor on 1st Ave from 14th to 18th St. and over to 2nd Avenue is ripe for a major Condofication. One theory is that Mt Sinai will buy the air rights that Blackstone acquired in the StuyTown deal (and is allowed to transfer to nearby properties) and use them to build tall condos on 1st Avenue and opposite Stuyvesant Square Park, whch is now conveniently undergoing a major renovation after being neglected for decades..
Whether they are cashing out or just consolidating services, any type of hospital downsizing will wipe out all the small businesses in the area that depend on hospital workers to survive. If they sell the buildings off to condo developers, this will have a major impact on the entire East Village, turning 1st Ave into a wall of tall buildings like Houston St or 6th Avenue will turn the area into yet another Horridor. Thanks DeBlasio.
This neighborhood is starved for luxury housing!
Also, if people can't hang on for a few more minutes as the ambulance speeds up to the Upper East Side, they probably deserve to die.
First you get rid of as many people as possible with rent stabilized apartments. Then you cut off affordable food by closing or upscaling supermarkets in the neighborhood, it that doesn't work you shut down hospitals so the poor will have no health care options. That's is how you commit class war on the poor.
Photoshop an aston martin into the first picture, take out the ambulance, copy and paste something about the nightlife, restaurants, and rich history of the area and the marketing team is already half done.
Giovanni, you nailed it. As mentioned the big piece of this is the air rights from Stuy Town.
Tourists and transients do not come to the EV for its a hospital; they have no need for it. The neighborhood does not need a hospital since the East Villagers [of] today! are healthier and are indestructible. Just look -- liqueterias, brodo, yogas, kale, quinoa, kobucha, hakuna matata, artisanal, organic, fresh, and farm-to-to table and gluten-free whatnots. And the way they're riding them CitiBikes -- not stopping at red lights, on the sidewalks, not yielding to those with the right of way... -- and the way they're consuming alcohol and desserts, they act and think as if they're invincible and immortal.
Simple solution for Mount Sinai Beth Israel to be in the black is to have a full liquor license, and make it a hospital themed bar or "restaurant", with the servers dress-up in sexy nurse attire and drinks available via enema, reverse catheter, NPO and IV. Nurse, I need a drink, stat!
Kinky mind, 10:08. Probably just what the new EV needs?!
I know conspiracy theories are fun and absolve you of the responsibility for knowing what is actually going on, but if you actually cared about what is going on, it only takes a few minutes to inform yourself. Hospitals, like all things, require supplies and personnel to keep the doors open. Medical professionals, supplies and services are all very, very expensive. Insurance company reimbursement isn't great, but the real killer is medicare and medicaid reimbursement is just pennies on the dollar.
But hey, who wants to get into things that require thought when you can just declare it to be class war and continue to wallow in ignorance or better yet, be more concerned about and make idiot comments about kombucha or froyo. If you ever get a bad bleeder, I'm sure spouting paranoid idiocies about kale, air rights and class war will tide you over while traffic is snarled up first ave. Hooray for priorities!
Giovanni, you got it. Sadly you are probably 1,000% right about this.
East Village's priorities right now are to serve as much alcohol and sugar into one's bloodstream. So, who's the idiot? Hooray indeed. Or more like WOOOOOOOO!
@11:12am: "but the real killer is medicare" - said the person who is planning never to get old! Yeah, it's not drug overcharges or anything, it's JUST medicare that's doing the hospitals in ... NOT.
In case you haven't noticed, EVERYTHING in NYC is expensive. Housing, hospitals, food, etc. But where's all the money going? It's concentrated at the top, in the hands of those relatively few who are paid enormous salaries/bonuses to be "in charge" while the actual WORK (the scut work, the caring for patients, or mopping of floors) is done by people who are FAR LESS well-compensated.
10:08 AM is a bot.
And please don't advertise my favorite park in the city.
Thank you.
Nurse Ratched has given one too many enemas thus she thinks everyone's an a--hole and does not understand satire.
@1112, thank you.
@Anon. 11:12 - Okay honey, then please tell me, if I ever do get that "bad bleeder" you mention, or have any other kind of medical emergency, which one of the coffee emporia or ice cream shoppes I can go into to get stitched up? I'm quite curious to know which ones of them offer emergency or trauma medical services on the side.
The millionairess Huguette Clark chose to live in a hospital for more than 20 years until she died. She chose Beth Israel. I assumed it was partially for the view of the park she had out her window. She had real estate all over the country (and city) but chose these future condos.
The health industry in this country is just that an industry, for profit with a sizable amount of cash going to middle man insurance companies which do nothing to make or keep you healthy they are just a bureaucracy that always gets paid. If Congress would stop pandering to big insurance and create a real tax payer funded system we would be better off, except for insurance companies that is. Capitalism should not fuck with peoples health.
Hugette Clark was also deeply insane.
Ken Langone is a big De Blasio contributor. It makes you wonder if he told Mayor Bill to let Beth Israel close to get rid of the competition for his NYU supported hospital.
I was in the ER at Beth Israel on 4/10 and a nurse there told me the same thing. Having been through the closures of Cabrini AND St Vincents - where will anyone go for care? This is why we are now seeing a surge in these emergency clinics. They are meant to replace the ER to a certain degree but as the nurse noted the emergency clinics don't have nearly the capability of the ER and most patients wind up getting sent to the ER anyway. My doctor just left BI in December and is now practicing in New Jersey. This is basically what happened before with the other two hospital closings, doctors start abandoning ship about a year before the closing. My guess is that Mt Sinai acquired BI with the intent of closing the hospital. In some ways this Lessens the loss of the hospital and makes it seem different from the other closings. So soon we will be pushing 9 million people on this island with very little capacity to give health care or treat real emergencies. In the words of the nurse I spoke with "the ground beneath us is worth more than the hospital."
Gojira, my dear, if you get a bad bleeder, I don't think the presence or lack of an ice cream shop or coffee emporium is going to have anything at all to do with the situation. Your life may not be bigger than the question of whether you are personally rankled by the retail selection in the area, but believe it or not, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. Yes, there are questions in the world that are not determined by the number of coffee, ice cream, or retail selections of any kind between Houston and 14th Street. Reality is much bigger than that, whether you can see it or not. Beth Israel is having problems because they are underfunded.
Their operating costs are higher than their revenues. That is due to the insurance companies and government not reimbursing them adequately for their very, very high costs. It is not the case that, for example if Empire Biscuit were to shutter, the money fairy would drop off a few burlap sacks with dollar signs on them, balance the books, and all would be well. It is also not the case that if the 13th step were to shutter, that Beth Israel would open the Beth Israel trauma annex in the space.
East Village today! wants and needs mixologists, biscuitologists, ramenologists..., more so than a cardiologist, oncologist, and anesthesiologist.
@6:21pm: Aren't mixologists basically anesthesiologists? Both help you get to where you're feeling no pain.
I really prefer the other half of Stuyvesant Sq. Rutherford Place is the place to live, but the chance to live there is almost impossible. And I do not mean fake Rutherford , the one on the corner which is really on 17th.
Old silver leg (Peter Stuyvesant) would probably laugh at the state of his farm now.
http://www.6sqft.com/nyc-time-machine-lets-users-navigate-overlaid-maps-from-1600-to-present-day/
There is a site where you see the transformation of Peter Stuyvesant's farm in map overlay form. It is so cool!
Remember "Fiver" in Watership Down?
Blackberry: Men have always hated us.
Holly: No. They just destroyed the warren because we were in their way.
Fiver: They'll never rest until they've spoiled the earth.
Unless the bros and their sorority hanger-ons are going under the knife after being treated by a mixologist, then yes? I'd say mixologists are more in line with gynecologists...
closing Beth Israel is sick..yes I mean to be snide and honest at the same time..
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