By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — Civil rights lawyer Yetta Kurland is filing a lawsuit against St. Vincent’s Hospital on Tuesday in a last-minute effort to keep the hospital open.
Kurland is filing the suit on behalf of over a dozen — she said the list is growing hourly — community members, nurses, doctors and patients for whom the closure of St. Vincent’s is a “life and death issue.”
One of Kurland’s plaintiffs, Richard Stack, has had AIDs for 25 years and moved just a few blocks from St. Vincent’s so that he could get the best care possible as quickly as necessary.
When Stack showed up at the hospital with an emergency Monday morning, St. Vincent’s turned him away. Kurland didn’t know what hospital Stack ended up at, but she realized it was time for action and answers.
“It hit me how serious and how catastrophic it would be if this hospital closed,” Kurland said in an interview Monday, adding that it was unthinkable that the 160-year-old institution that had served as the city’s primary hospital immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks would close its doors.
The lawyer said that St. Vincent’s, whose board decided to shut the hospital down two weeks ago because of ongoing financial issues, violated the law by proceeding with its closure before it had obtained approval from the State Department of Health.
But a spokeswoman for the State Department of Health did not think the lawsuit held any weight.
“I think that premise is incorrect. There is nothing that St. Vincent’s has done that has not been approved,” said DOH spokeswoman Claudia Hutton.
She said that there were still issues being worked out, but that St. Vincent’s is a private hospital and had the right to close.
“Just because a hospital is open to the public does not mean it’s a public hospital,” Hutton said.
The spokeswoman said that the hospital had not had a viable financial plan for a few years, noting that one of the problems for the community hospital was that only 14 percent of its patients came from the closest 11 zip codes.
“Even the state of New York doesn’t have enough money to keep them open,” Hutton said.
But one of the Kurland's concerns is the lack of transparency in St. Vincent’s finances. She said said she wanted to know what had happened to some of the revenue streams the hospital had, including a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.
She said she understood that the hospital was a private entity, but said, “When you go into the business of public health, you open the door to public scrutiny.”
“We've been trying for months, if not years to try and help them,” Kurland said of the community’s efforts to come to St. Vincent’s rescue.
“I really want answers,” she said.
