SAINT VINCENT’S HOSPITAL CLOSES.

SAINT VINCENT’S HOSPITAL CLOSES. Saint Vincent’s Hospital was a landmark in Greenwich Villlage while we lived there. This New York magazine article by Mark Levine says that it had been there for over 160 years. St. Vincent’s recently closed. The article describes a number of errors that St. Vincent’s made and points out that almost all of a New York hospital’s costs are higher than in the rest of the country. But the statistics the article gives make it understandable why St. Vincent’s was doomed. New York hospital emergency rooms are required to treat anybody regardless of ability to pay. Medicaid “typically reimburses about half the cost of an ER visit in the city”; and Medicare made “an average underpayment of 4.7 percent in 2008.” Consequently, “New York hospitals can expect to lose money on more than seven in ten people who come through the door.” That leaves a New York hospital to attempt to recover the deficit from charges to the remaining patients, most of whom have private insurance. Mark Levine thinks that a number of other New York hospitals will close, and it is hard to think that a business that loses money on 70% of its customers can survive.