As Court Challenges Continue, Community Battles Planned Beth Israel Hospital Closure
Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital, one of two hospitals that serve Lower Manhattan, was slated to close on March 26, but a grassroots community campaign has persuaded a higher-court judge to block the move, at least temporarily.
The latest twists in the years-long saga of the effort by the Mount Sinai Health System to shutter the hospital at First Avenue and 16th Street came at the start and the end of last week. On February 24, State Supreme Court judge Jeffrey Pearlman handed down a ruling that vacated a temporary restraining order issued last August, and simultaneously dismissed a lawsuit seeking to halt the planned closure. The Monday decision found that the State’s Department of Health (DOH), approval from which is legally required before any hospital is allowed to close, “evaluated facts in its area of expertise; that the record supports its actions, that the determination was not arbitrary and capricious; and that Petitioner’s requests for relief are denied.”
This effectively granted permission to the Mount Sinai Health System – which alleges that has lost roughly $1 billion since acquiring the hospital in 2013, and is losing some $500,000 per day while being required to continue operating the facility – to shut down Beth Israel.
In response, an alliance of elected officials representing Lower Manhattan – including Congressman Dan Goldman, State Senator Brian Kavanagh, State Assembly members Deborah Glick and Grace Lee, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, and City Council member Christopher Marte – responded in a joint statement: “throughout this entire process, our offices have advocated to maintain health services…. We remain committed to exercising all oversight authority to hold Mount Sinai accountable, and to securing access to health care services for Lower Manhattan.”
Within hours of Judge Pearlman’s ruling, the Mount Sinai Health System ceased operations at Beth Israel other than its emergency room, which is a receiving facility for 911 calls in Lower Manhattan. Mount Sinai also announced that it planned to close the facility entirely by March 26.
By the Tuesday, however, attorney Arthur Schwartz (representing a grassroots organization, the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel Hospital) had filed a brief with a higher court, the Appellate Division of the First Judicial Department. On Friday, judge John Higgitt responded with a new restraining order, forbidding Mount Sinai to proceed with the closure plan, pending a further review by a panel of Appellate Division judges.
Among the documents filed by Mr. Schwartz is a letter from a group of unnamed “Concerned Employees of Beth Israel” who, “given our continued employment by Mount Sinai, are unable to speak for attribution.” This letter alleges, “Mount Sinai continues to inundate the court with specious rhetoric that misrepresents the status quo at Beth Israel and, more important, how they did everything within their power to create the circumstances they now disingenuously cite for wanting to close the hospital.” The letter continues, “their repeated demurrals notwithstanding, this has always been about the one issue that Mount Sinai’s overpaid, underperforming executives have steadfastly refused to address: their scheme to reap an enormous payday by selling the land under Beth Israel.”