The proposal points to an emergency department where about half of its patients are either uninsured or served by Medicaid. And while some of the area’s more affluent residents go to other facilities for elective procedures, there are some 300,000 people living in lower Manhattan and about 750,000 visiting and working in these neighborhoods each day.
“As the only acute-care hospital serving lower Manhattan, this campus is vital to meeting the healthcare needs of many populations,” New York-Presbyterian Hospital CEO Dr. Steven Corwin said in a release.
New York Downtown was the first hospital to respond to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, yet as its income statement has shrunk in recent years, so too has its number of beds. In 2006, the hospital’s number of certified beds dropped from 254 to 180. For the area that includes the Financial District, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, that equals .57 hospital beds per 1,000 residents, which is well below the 6.3 hospital beds per 1,000 residents in New York County overall.
Though further plans to expand the hospital are not clear at this time, according to New York-Presbyterian spokeswoman Myrna Manners, the proposal document indicates that New York-Presbyterian will assume the existing debt of New York Downtown and “expects that, post-acquisition, (New York Downtown) will become and remain a financially viable division of (New York-Presbyterian).”
“The merger of our hospital with New York-Presbyterian Hospital ensures that the diverse communities of lower Manhattan will have access to first-class healthcare for generations to come,” New York Downtown Hospital board of trustees chairman Christopher Mann said in the release.
Follow Rachel Landen on Twitter: @MHrlanden
