ROOSEVELT ISLAND HOSP ON CHOPPING BLOCK
Talk of closing last option on R’velt I.
Public hospital officials are seriously considering the closure of at least one of the city’s five long-term care facilities, according to two people with knowledge of city Health and Hospital Corp.’s plans.
Possibly on the chopping block is Coler Hospital, located on Roosevelt Island’s northern end, which would mean that 594 patients now staying at the 24-hour-a-day, 815-bed facility would have to be transferred elsewhere.
Talks about the possible closure are taking place at the highest levels of HHC, and involve the network’s CEO, Mitchell Katz, one source said.
Administrators who work at Coler “keep talking about how this may happen,” said another. “The future is uncertain – that’s what we keep being told by the hospital administration,” the source said. “It’s not a secret.”
A third source said an HHC proposal to convert Coler from an inpatient facility to one primarily focused on outpatient care began circulating about a year ago.
The proposal also mentioned Coney Island Hospital as a potential candidate for downsizing, according to the source.
“It’s the way a lot of hospitals are going to save money,” the source said, adding that HHC needs to get its “financial house in order.”
After the 2013 closure of the Goldwater campus of ColerGoldwater Hospital on the island’s southern end to make way for the construction of Cornell University’s new graduate school of technology, Coler became the only health care facility that offers roundthe-clock care there.
Asked whether HHC officials have discussed plans to shut down Coler, HHC spokesman Robert de Luna didn’t directly respond.
HHC does not share brainstorming or planning information publicly, he said.
Founded as the Bird S. Coler Hospital in 1952, the publicly owned and operated facility now specializes in short-term rehabilitation and long-term nursing for people who can no longer take care of themselves on their own.
Downsizing Coler or shutting it down altogether would give the city the option of selling off some or all of the real estate it now occupies. The site is just 2 miles from the site of the recently announced new Amazon headquarters, which will surely boost its value.
For HHC, which is facing up to a $1.6 billion budget shortfall in 2019, selling the land could help stabilize its beleaguered finances.
But Judy Wessler, a health advocate and former director of the citywide Commission on the Public’s Health System, said despite HHC’s poor finances, closing Coler is still “a terrible idea.”
“You don’t change what works. Coler works,” she said. “There’s gotta be a damn good reason to do it if it’s going to be done.”
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is also opposed to shutting down Coler.
“I don’t want to close it,” she said, but added if it does close, the land should be used for “100% affordable housing.”
De Luna said HHC has no intention of closing any hospital, while also noting that Coler is a post-acute care facility, not a hospital. “We are committed to maintaining and improving our post-acute care services and have no plans to reduce services,” he said.