Mount Sinai is relocating Beth Israel Hospital employees and equipment to other facilities, citing systemwide patient safety concerns as an ongoing lawsuit forces the ailing hospital to stay open.
The health system will transfer 36 employees — including nurses, patient care associates and respiratory therapists — from Beth Israel’s main campus to work at other hospitals within the health system, according to a letter sent to employees on Tuesday by Mount Sinai CEO Dr. Brendan Carr and reviewed by Crain’s. Mount Sinai will also remove equipment such as dialysis machines and surgical instruments that have been in storage at the 16th Street hospital, the letter said. The transfers will take effect immediately.
Mount Sinai is prohibited from closing down services or reducing its workforce at Beth Israel because of an ongoing lawsuit brought by community advocates who want the hospital to stay open. A state judge issued a temporary restraining order in August that blocked the hospital from any attempts to close down, but allowed executives to take “clinically appropriate steps” to keep patients safe as long as the hospital stayed open.
The health system has yet to move staff or equipment out of Beth Israel, Carr said. But increasing concerns about staffing levels at other hospitals and uncertainty around when the court will issue a decision on the closure have led leadership to start making changes, he added.
“Our job is to be ahead of safety concerns,” Carr told Crain’s. “I believe it’s time.”
The situation is further complicated by a promise made by the hospital to offer union members at Beth Israel jobs at other hospitals to retain staff, Carr said. The contingency has resulted in a situation where 733 jobs across the system are being held for union members, but the hospital can’t fill them until the lawsuit concludes. The holding pattern has forced other employees to pick up the slack as jobs stay open, according to Carr.
The slated employee transfers will fill some of those vacancies and shift staff around to help other hospitals prepare for a surge in winter respiratory illnesses, Carr added.
The transfers represent a small portion of the 1,000 staffers who currently work at Beth Israel, according to Loren Riegelhaupt, an outside communications consultant who represents the health system. Roughly 800 employees have resigned since October 2023, when the closure was announced, he said.
Carr said that failing to prepare for potential safety concerns will only cause further harm for the hospital, adding that losing patients’ confidence could result in negative financial implications. The hospital says that it has already lost $200 million because of the delays in its closure of Beth Israel, adding that keeping the hospital open forces it to lose between $500,000 and $600,000 a day. The health system recorded $10.8 billion in annual revenue in 2023, the latest year that financial data is available.
