EVG file photo by Stacie Joy
Mount Sinai officials are hosting a public forum tonight on the proposed closure of the Mount Sinai Beth Israel 16th Street campus on First Avenue.
As previously reported, there's a pending July 12, 2024, closing date on the books. Last month, officials reportedly notified state regulators — who must sign off on their plans — of their request to shutter the 799-bed teaching hospital.
Per the meeting flyer (which we only just received):
Mount Sinai Beth Israel executives will discuss the plans for Downtown, the timeline on closure, and how Mount Sinai will continue to address the needs of the community now and in the future. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A open to the public.
The news of the closure here drew immediate criticism from health advocates and elected officials, who say downtown Manhattan is underserved and emergency response times are already high.
Per the Times from Nov. 3:
The closure would mean longer ambulance rides and wait times for some downtown residents having strokes and heart attacks, nurses who work at the hospital said. And it will most likely lead to overcrowding and longer wait times in emergency rooms at hospitals farther uptown.
6 comments:
If beds are going empty, then it might make sense to close the hospital. I don't know about that. But what doesn't make sense is closing the emergency room without plans to expand other area emergency rooms. Those are all already overcrowded with unconscionable wait times. What are they thinking?
Mount Sinai seems to be more interested in the value of real estate than in providing medical care to New Yorkers. When they announced their $1B plan to build a new EV hospital in 2019, did they receive any state or federal money to subsidize their plan? If so, what happened to it?
Remember how we didn't have close to enough hospital beds two years ago? and people died because of it.
Beds like this should be considered a strategic resource. Maybe THIS building gets torn down but there needs to be some warehouse somewhere kitted out to accommodate these lost beds in an emergency. We talked a lot about the need for the old St Vincent's .... we forget very quickly.
Of course this public forum is sprung on the public - even engaged ones - so that any dissent will occur will be minimal and too late. This is a disastrous move by Mount Sinai and obvious money grab under the cloak of red tape / darkness.
@Xeo - Good point. The city resorted to setting up tents in Central Park during the pandemic! How quickly we forget.
If hospital beds are going unused now while migrants are sleeping on the streets, ideally there could be some more nimble response to the use of this facility than to dismantle it. I expect that is more easily said than done, but a flexible resource shouldn't be impossible to facilitate.
And when the next pandemic comes down the pike, we won't be crippled by lack of beds.
Just now seeing this post. I wish there had been a bit more notice or outreach. (I wish our elected officials could have sent an email blast when they had learned of the meeting.) It is amusing timing to host this meeting on Giving Tuesday; I received at least five emails from Mount Sinai asking for money. Why should I ever visit another Mount Sinai hospital when they are closing their closest hospital to me?
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