By Caroline Lewis, November 30, 2023
Mount Sinai Health System is accelerating its plan to close the Beth Israel hospital on the Lower East Side — drawing criticism from elected officials, residents and hospital staff who say the community depends on the hospital’s services.
The health system had already shared a plan with the state health department in late October saying it would close the medical center in July 2024 and gradually reduce its capacity leading up to that date. But earlier this month, Mount Sinai issued an addendum that ends some Beth Israel services by the end of this year.
“This is personal,” Barbara Caporale said on Tuesday night at a forum at Baruch College, where community members spoke out against the closure plan and stepped-up timeline. “My kid was born here. My father has a stroke, a heart attack, he comes in, he gets service, he goes to the ICU. You need a hospital where families can come and visit.”
But Mount Sinai says reducing the hospital’s services is a matter of patient safety. Beth Israel “is already experiencing decreased patient utilization and has received a number of staff resignations as result of the planned closure that, coupled together, will impact on the delivery of services,” according to the addendum.
Some of the changes are imminent. For instance, Beth Israel is proposing to stop taking all elective cardiac catheterization and interventional radiology cases by mid-December and to move all inpatient elective surgeries to other Mount Sinai facilities starting in January.
The state still must approve the health system’s closure plan before it can be finalized. A spokesperson for the state health department said it couldn’t comment on that process while the plan is under review.