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St. Vincent's Bled Dry by Execs Before Closing, Suit Says

By DNAinfo Staff on August 15, 2010 10:42am  | Updated on August 16, 2010 10:57am

People walk by the entrance to St. Vincent's Hospital before it closed in April.
People walk by the entrance to St. Vincent's Hospital before it closed in April.
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Nina Mandell

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — Ten executives at the now shuttered St. Vincent's Hospital were paid a staggering $10 million per year in wages, a new lawsuit claims.

The executives are also accused of spending millions from the medical center and then exaggerated its debt before closing it, the New York Post reported.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn called former executives St Vincent's Hospital hypocrites for their high salaries while other staff took pay cuts.

"Orderlies, janitors, technicians, people who draw blood took cuts in their pay and the leaders didn't? That's just a disgrace!" said Quinn, according to the Post.

The suit, due to be filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday, claims the hospital spent a fortune on "highly questionable" expenses, including a $278,000 golf outing.

The lawsuit, which is being filed by a lawyer representing former staff members, claimed in the two years before closing, the hospital also paid $17 million for "management consultants," $3.8 million on "professional fund-raising" and $104 million on unspecified costs.

"[St. Vincent's] has been in bankruptcy, come out of bankruptcy and gone back into bankruptcy," Quinn said.

"If you are asking — as St. Vincent's did — orderlies and technicians to take pay cuts, you better stand up and lead by example, because it is the ultimate in hypocrisy to do what they did."

The hospital, run by the Sisters of Charity, closed in April because it had debts of more than $1 billion.

But the lawsuit said that debt was exaggerated by hundreds of millions of dollars in loans picked up by other hospitals, and dumped on St. Vincent's when it merged with the other institutions.

"The debt of the hospital was specifically exaggerated by numerous factors, including the transfer of debt from other Catholic medical centers and mismanagement by the board of directors," the lawsuit says.

"These transfers remain undisclosed to the public."

The legal filing aims to force the state Health Department to release documents about the hospital's closing.

A doctor told the Post he witnessed the looting. "They blew hundreds of millions on consultants," he said. "The general feeling among the staff was this was incompetence that verged on criminal behavior."

The closing of the hospital in April was a controversial decision that led to protests by politicians, nurses, doctors and West Village residents.