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Some questions on the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital
- How can a charity that worked with a big chunk of public funding, run up 1 BILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT that rendered it insolvent and incapable of fulfilling the public duty we paid them to deliver with our taxes? From Crain's:
The bankruptcy documents for Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers list many reasons for its financial failure. Some of the financial travails are shared by all New York City hospitals. But others were clearly the result of poor decisions by SVCMC's leadership.
The documents trace the roots of the current bankruptcy to the previous one. The system's leadership signed off on a reorganization plan in August 2007 that was unworkable.
“Despite a long Chapter 11 process,” writes chief restructuring officer Mark Toney in his affidavit, SVCMC “emerged from Chapter 11 with a complex capital structure consisting of various layers of secured debt, as well as substantial unsecured liabilities, totaling over $1 billion.”
But SVCMC filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2005 with $1.1 billion in liabilities—the same amount as when it emerged. Why did the board and management sign off on such a plan, SVCMC critics have long wondered.
Even after it had restructured, SVCMC couldn't pay off $1 billion in post-bankruptcy debt from its ongoing operations. The new bankruptcy filing on Wednesday states that its “operating revenues have remained relatively constant.” It had operating losses of $43 million in 2008 and $64 million in 2009. St. Vincent's Hospital itself generated $81 million in losses in 2008 and $107 million in 2009.
- Why weren't the state and city comptrollers on the ass of the Catholic Church back in 2005 when the hospital first declared bankruptcy for such a staggering amoung of money?
- Is St. Vincent's Hospital being closed for a debt or for real estate speculation?
- Isn't it stupid public health policy to have a city depend on "the marketplace" for hospital care?
- What will the city and state do now that there's no hospital to care for the 60,000 emergency room visits and other 20,000 patient visits St. Vincent's Hospital managed yearly?
- Is the city going to change traffic patterns across the city to always ensure there's a speedy ambulance connection from the West Village to the hospitals that are far-away from 12th Street and 7th Avenue?
- Does Richard F. Daines really not have any vested interest in seeing the hospital die?
Re: Some questions on the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital
There's a lawsuit to keep the hospital open. I don't know any details, but I've seen lawsuits fail in Queens (where we lost three major hospitals in the past three years).