After a long struggle to overcome millions of dollars of debt, St. Vincent’s Hospital will be closed, as the board of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers has voted tonight to shut down the West Village hospital. Elective surgeries will end by April 14, with no date yet set for the closing of the hospital.
“The decision to close St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan inpatient services was made only after the board, management and our advisers exhausted every possible alternative,” Alfred E. Smith IV, chairman of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, said in a statement. “[We were unable] to save the inpatient services at the hospital that has proudly served Manhattan’s West Side and downtown for 160 years.”
Governor Paterson said there is a possibility of preserving an urgent-care center in the neighborhood, a scaling down that would still require a partnering hospital (Mt. Sinai announced on Friday that it was withdrawing its bid to partner with St. Vincent’s to keep its acute-care hospital open). St. Vincent’s may sell or lease much of its coveted West Village real estate to help repay its close to $700 million of debt, the Times says.
