Beth Israel Closure Stopped for Now — Health Department Finally Acts

Can Our Hospital Be Restored?

By Arthur Schwartz

On April 2, as counsel for the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel Hospital and the NY Eye and Ear Infirmary, I received a copy of a letter from the NY State Department of Health (DOH) addressed to Elizabeth Sellman, President of Beth Israel. It read in part:

“This letter is regarding the closure plan submitted by Mount Sinai Beth Israel for the Department’s review. The closure plan is incomplete and is being returned.

In order to obtain the commissioner’s approval to close, DHDTC DAL 23-06 sets forth specific requirements that must be met.

• Please ensure the closure plan includes details related to the notification to Federal, State, and local-level elected officials and any organization that represents people who work at the hospital. This should include the notification means and some record of acknowledgment or attempts by Mount Sinai to gain acknowledgment of the notification and notes regarding feedback, if any was received. Additionally, please include documentation of written notification, with dates and times, of any public meeting(s) held with community stakeholders and notes regarding feedback.

• Identify and confirm availability of services at other area facilities beyond the Mount Sinai Health System network, including information to ensure that the provider can accept new patients. In the closure plan, please provide detailed information about your discussions with other hospitals in the surrounding area including the date that these discussions occurred and the responses from these hospitals regarding their capability and capacity to accept additional inpatient, emergency department, and outpatient volume of patients for medical-surgical care and behavioral health care. Specifically related to emergency services, Mount Sinai Beth Israel must work with other providers to identify, confirm, and explore possible partnerships or solutions to support the availability of emergency services and the capacity to respond to emergencies.

• The reason cited for Beth Israel’s closure is a claimed financial loss over the last two years, but the closure plan did not provide independent evidence to support this claim. Please include the last three years of audited financials for Mount Sinai Beth Israel and the Mount Sinai Health System, to demonstrate how the Beth Israel Hospital is adversely impacting Mount Sinai Health System’s financial stability. The closure plan noted there have been declining volumes at Beth Israel Hospital over the last ten years. However, the response to item 6, “the number of patient visits for the previous three years…” shows increasing visits. Please clarify.”

Every single one of these deficiencies was clear from the start. Every single one of the problems which the DOH singled out had been pointed out in the community lawsuit.

What was also clear from the beginning was that Beth Israel, and its corporate parent Mount Sinai Hospital, set out on a path to violate DOH regulations which barred the termination of any services pending approval of a closure application. Within a week after submitting their cursory application (late October 2023), Mount Sinai started closing services at Beth Israel. It took until December 21, 2023, after an embarrassing article in the NY Post about FDNY not bringing stroke patients to Beth Israel, that the Health Department issued a “Cease and Desist Order,“ which they never enforced. In mid-February, the Center for Medicaid Services issued a report about Beth Israel illegally diverting ambulances. That week we got a “Temporary Restraining Order” stopping the closure of further services. But Beth Israel continued, with DOH doing nothing. Finally on March 21, DOH issued a 10 page single spaced report “proposing” to find Beth Israel in violation of the Closure Regulations for closing dozens of services. But none of that would have happened without a ‘wink and a nod’ from the Health Department.

When, in response to the request by the Community Coalition’s lawyers, Judge Nicholas Moyne (who is a hero if there ever was one) issued an order to use “best efforts” to restore services, Beth Israel’s lawyers said, “We have a problem. All of our doctors have resigned effective March 31.” (They resigned because Mount Sinai had made it clear that they were going to close Beth Israel by the end of March, despite the laws and regulations). That didn’t stop Judge Moyne. Then, on April 2, after five months of inaction, the Health Department rejected the closure plan.

We met with the Judge again, and he announced his expectation that Mount Sinai/Beth Israel would work with the Plaintiffs (us ) and the DOH to figure out how to restore services. So far they have refused to meet.

A walk through Beth Israel today is like a walk through a museum. It has over 600 beds, fully equipped operating rooms, and an Emergency Room. But it is largely empty. No doctor wants to take a permanent job, and Beth Israel is advertising for doctors who are independent contractors. Nurses call me constantly about patients being examined and sent elsewhere, even those with dangerous health conditions.

We saved a hospital for now, but it has been stripped to the bone. And who should we blame? Governor Hochul, the government official who runs the Health Department. Governor Hochul, who takes large donations from the hospital industry, is a huge fan of downsizing hospitals. She recently suffered a defeat at the hands of the State Legislature which refused to fund her decision to turn University Hospital at Downstate Medical Center into an outpatient-only facility. She is clearly the one who gave the “wink and a nod” to the multi-million dollar salaried officials atop Mount Sinai that they could submit a cursory “Closure Application” and stop closing immediately despite the fact that it violated the law. Why else would the Health Department not intervene and wait almost five months to declare what was being done at Beth Israel illegal? And why else are they now joining with Mount Sinai to get our lawsuit dismissed, saying that public litigants should tell the Health Department what to do.?

Without our lawsuit, and the community groups organizing to stop the closure, and the united support of our local elected officials, we would not have stopped the closure.

We will succeed in getting Beth Israel restaffed and keeping it open. Governor Hochul be damned!

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Community Coalition Rallies to Celebrate Health Department Rejection of Beth Israel Closure

On April 20, despite temperatures in the high 30s and wind gusts of 20 miles per hour, around 100 community members, organized by the community Coalition to Save Beth Israel Hospital and the NY Eye and Ear Infirmary (NYEEI) marched from St. Mark‘s Church on the Bowery to Beth Israel Hospital, stopping along the way to hear from doctors working at NYEEI as they passed that hospital at 14th Street and 2nd Avenue. They then rallied across the street from Beth Israel and heard from political leaders and activists. Photos by Arthur Schwartz.