A medical institution that has been a fixture in the the city for nearly 90 years is closing. NY1's Bree Driscoll filed the following TV exclusive report.
Entire wings of the 13-story Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan's East Village are unused. What were once state-of-the-art treatment rooms are now cluttered storage rooms.
On an average day only 60 percent of the hospital's 825 beds are used.
"What we are dealing with is an infrastructure that is old, a facility that isn't efficient and it lives in the most competitive environment on planet earth in health care," said Mount Sinai Beth Israel CEO Dr. Kenneth Davis.
The hospital essentially has been on life support for years, losing $250 million since 2012. Now its owner, Mount Sinai Health System, is pulling the plug and announcing plans to close it in four years.
"Clearly it is not financially viable. This is an opportunity to say what do you really need? What should health care look like? What are we going to look like?" Davis said.
Hospital officials say the closure of the facility is the only option financially. With how treatment is changing Mount Sinai Beth Israel is in an evolve or die situation.
Thanks to advances in health care, hospital stays are not as long as they used to be. Many patients are discharged the day of their procedures. There just isn't the need for as many hospital beds in the city.
Mount Sinai Health System plans to replace Mount Sinai Beth Israel by opening a smaller hospital on 14th Street and Second Avenue with a full-service emergency department and 70 inpatient beds.
Mount Sinai also plans to expand its Ambulatory Care Center in Union Square.
"Every Emergency that has been taken care of in the past will be taken care of in the future. Every clinical need that they had has been taken care of in the past will be taken care of as well if not better in the future The only thing I ask them to understand is that it may not be in that one place it will be distributed over downtown," Davis said.
Hospital officials say all unionized employees and 90 percent of non-unionized workers will keep their jobs. They also say all physicians in training will eventually be placed in other programs.
In a statement, the New York State Nurses Association said, "Preserving and expanding healthcare access and services to all communities served by the Mt. Sinai system should be paramount to any plans that would restructure existing services in the area. It's essential that all stakeholders from the affected communities, including elected officials, community based organizations, and unions be included in that process to ensure access to care in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Maintaining quality care also means ensuring frontline MDs, RNs and Caregivers continue to provide care to the communities involved in these settings. With Mount Sinai's pledge to ensure job opportunities for Beth Israel unionized employees, we are working with Mount Sinai administration, 1199, and our membership to ensure that affected frontline healthcare workers remain an active and vibrant part of the system in every way."