The board of St. Vincents Hospital in lower Manhattan threw in the financial towel last night, voting to close in-patient services that had been a medical mainstay in Greenwich Village for 160 years.
The decision wasnt a surprise, having dragged on for six months as the 727-bed hospital tried to come up with a rescue plan to handle $700 million in debt. Still, the closure will deal a blow to medical services in the area as well as marking the end of an institution filled with history.
St. Vincents was founded by four Sisters of Charity in 1849 to treat victims of a cholera epidemic and is the last Catholic general hospital in New York City. It treated victims from the sinking of the Titanic to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and was one of the early institutions to respond to the AIDS epidemic.
New York state recently loaned St. Vincents $9 million and there was talk by politicians of trying to save a scaled-down version of some of the Greenwich Village facility. In the meantime, elective surgeries will end by April 14 while outpatient services and other facilities and services are slated to stay open in hopes of lining up partners or other operating plans.
Heres more from the WSJ, New York Times and the Associated Press. St. Vincent’s has put out info starting here.
Photo: Associated Press