North General to file for Chapter 11

Harlem’s North General Hospital is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after struggling financially for months, Crain’s reported. It will cease to function as an acute care hospital and will instead offer expanded primary care services, while the main hospital building will be converted into a skilled nursing facility. The hospital, at 1879 Madison Avenue, will begin to wind down operations on or before Friday. Neighboring hospitals, including Mount Sinai Medical Center, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, New York-Presbyterian, and the New York City Health & Hospital Corporation’s Harlem and Metropolitan hospitals,
are expected to serve the needs of the community, where more than a quarter of the low-income residents reported that they do not have a primary care doctor. Filing for bankruptcy will facilitate the transfer of the various hospital properties to the new health care providers, an arrangement arrived at by the Paterson administration following months of sensitive political negotiations, since they did not want to see another hospital fail so soon after the closing of St. Vincent’s. [Crain’s]