Cobble Hill’s debt-laden Long Island College Hospital is merging with SUNY Downstate Medical Center of Crown Heights, pending approval by the state. The hospital’s current operator, Continuum Health Partners, has already approved the plan, which will fend off the facility’s closure after a year of uncertainty. LICH is $170 million in debt and in 2008, it sold several buildings, laid off hundreds of employees and had proposed shuttering its maternity, pediatrics and dentistry departments. There is no timeline for the merger as of yet, hospital officials said. Continuum, which also operates St. Luke’s and Roosevelt hospitals in Manhattan, recently submitted a proposal to take over St. Vincent’s Hospital in the West Village. Continuum’s plan would convert St. Vincent’s it into a community health center and significantly scaling back emergency services. [Brooklyn Paper]

A proposal by a major medical group could force the closure of Greenwich Village’s St. Vincent’s Medical Center, the Post reported. The 160-year-old, 727-bed facility is the last Catholic hospital in the city and the only full-service hospital on the lower West Side. Continuum Health Partners, the operator of St. Luke’s and Roosevelt hospitals in Manhattan that, together, form a medical complex adjacent to Columbia University, submitted the plan, under which it would take over St. Vincent’s and convert it into a community health center, scaling back on its trauma and emergency center and rerouting surgical and in-patient services to other city hospitals. The nearest facilities are New York Downtown Hospital, Beth Israel, NYU and Bellevue and Roosevelt Hospital. The plan has the backing of GE Capital and TD Bank, which hold a combined $300 million in debt for St. Vincent’s, and it also has the approval of the state. St. Vincent’s plan to redevelop its campus with the Rudin Co. is now in question. Rudin planned to build a new, state-of-the-art medical facility, along with a market-rate condo complex on the site, and St. Vincent’s recently received approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to move forward with its $1.6 billion facelift. The hospital is currently $700 million in debt, and in 2007, closed its Midtown hospital and sold off two others in Queens. [Post]