Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center - Closing

Closing

For years leading up to its 2010 closing, St. Vincent's was the target of a controversial billion-dollar luxury condo conversion plan by the Rudin real estate dynasty. St. Vincent's occupied a large real estate foot print ; it consisted of several hospital buildings and a number of outpatient facilities, had more than 1,000 affiliated physicians, including 70 full-time and 300 voluntary attending physicians, and trained more than 300 residents and fellows annually. It was the designated provider for New York and New Jersey members of the U.S. Department of Defense Health Plan. St. Vincent's was the primary admitting hospital for those injured in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. St. Vincent's was the 3rd oldest hospital in New York City after The New York Hospital and Bellevue Hospital.

As a Catholic hospital, St. Vincent's was officially sponsored by the Sisters of Charity and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn

In the months before St. Vincent's closed, the Rudin family was waiting to carry out its controversial takeover of St. Vincent's real estate properties. On April 6, 2010, the Board of Directors of Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, headed by Alfred E. Smith IV, voted to authorize the closure of St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan inpatient services including all acute, rehab, and behavioral health. Hospital administrators claimed that the vote to close came after a six-month long effort to save the financially troubled institution, but prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office were reported to have launched an investigation to determine whether administrators intentionally ran St. Vincent's into the ground so that it could be sold to the Rudin family. The remaining parts of Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, including its nursing homes, home health agency, St. Vincent's Hospital Westchester, and US Family Health Plan, will continue to operate without interruption, but these entities will be sold to other providers' systems.

St. Vincent's employees were notified of the hospital's intent to close on April 7, 2010. On April 9, 2010, the hospital stopped accepting ambulances. It stopped accepting inpatient admissions and elective surgery on April 14, 2010, and the next day it began limiting emergency care to treating and releasing patients or transferring them to other hospitals if they needed to be admitted. On April 19, 2010, more than 1,000 staff were laid off, which represented approximately one-third of the hospital's workforce. On April 14, 2010, St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The petition, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, showed liabilities of more than $1 billion.