Beth Israel Closes After Local Activists Lose Long Legal Fight

Beth Israel Hospital has officially shuttered its doors, after Mount Sinai received a favorable appeals ruling in a protracted legal fight against local healthcare advocates. It marks the end of an institution, located on First Avenue and East 16th Street, that has served the area since 1889.

A hospital bay, where EMTs once wheeled patients on gurneys into the emergency room, housed only a U-Haul moving van last week.

Workers ripped Mount Sinai Beth Israel signage off the exterior on April 9, as well as scaffolding surrounding the structure. A worker, who said he had worked in the radiology department since 2006, was seen outside on April 10: “I want to get a picture before I collect my personal belongings.” Despite the closure, he said that “only a few people” were laid off. Indeed, as of April 11, there was no WARN notice filed with the NYS Labor Department that would have indicated layoffs.

Mount Sinai formally decided to close Beth Israel in late 2023, aiming for a closure date of mid-2024. They claimed that the hospital had lost over $1 billion in the decade since they took it over in 2013. In the following months, they faced an array of roadblocks after a group known as the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel filed a mammoth lawsuit against them, alleging that the closure violated public health laws and was possibly a scheme to take advantage of the hot real estate market.

The coalition also expressed alarm that Beth Israel’s closure would leave 400,000 patients in Lower Manhattan with only one other major hospital outpost, a branch of New-York Presbyterian. Much of Manhattan’s political establishment also rallied to save the hospital, including local representatives City Council Members Keith Powers (who grew up in Stuyvesant Town across from the hospital), State Assembly Member Harvey Epstein (whose son was born there), and NYS Senator Kristen Gonzalez (whose district includes the hospital).

The group’s legal efforts led to restraining orders, a cease-and-desist, and even an initial rejection of Mount Sinai’s closure plans by the state’s Department of Health. The DOH finally approved a revised closure plan last August, which eventually led to the ruling by a group of appeals court judges that allowed the closure to finally go ahead.

Mount Sinai CEO Brendan G. Carr addressed the closure in an email blast the day before it officially occurred on Wednesday, April 9: “I have always promised to be as transparent as possible and communicate as openly as I can about all issues, and especially around the closure of Mount Sinai Beth Israel (MSBI). . . . Which is why I want you all to hear it from me directly tonight that, in close coordination with the New York State Department of Health (DOH) and state regulators, we are closing the emergency department at MSBI at 8am tomorrow morning,” he wrote. All other departments had already been closed.

”This is the final step in the execution of our comprehensive closure plan that was approved by the DOH in July 2024 and that we began carrying out in February after the court case was dismissed,” Carr’s email continued. “We have sent electronic and paper letters to more than 55,000 of our patients to ensure they have information on the closure, sent updates via MyMountSinai notifications, and placed flyers and signage throughout the Emergency Department (ED) and the hospital.”

Carr also said that Mount Sinai would be opening an urgent-care facility on East 14th Street that would open on a 24/7 basis. He ended the announcement by thanking Beth Israel staff and alumni, writing, “I know how much this building meant to so many of you. . . . I just want to say thank you again from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done for lower Manhattan, Beth Israel, Mount Sinai, each other, and most of all, our patients.”

Beth Israel, which was founded by Orthodox Jews, opened its doors to the surrounding Lower East Side in 1890. The hospital originally sought out Jewish patients living in nearby tenement housing, and later expanded into a valued 799-bed teaching hospital serving much of Lower Manhattan at its current location.

The Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel did not respond to comment by press time.