By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — New York Downtown Hospital will close a dialysis unit that serves about 50 local residents as early as March.
The seven-bed outpatient dialysis unit grew too expensive to operate because it serves such a small number of people, a hospital spokesman said Wednesday.
The State Department of Health still has to approve the closure, but then the unit will shut down as soon as the hospital finds a new treatment site for all the patients. That should take about three months, the spokesman said.
Word of the impending closure began to leak out this week, as some doctors at the hospital told their patients.
"It’s very disturbing to the patients," said Julie Nadel, 55, a TriBeCa resident whose husband receives dialysis at the hospital three times per week. "Some people were crying, and their blood pressure was going up. It’s sad."
Nadel said there are other dialysis centers in Chinatown and the Village, but none are as convenient as Downtown Hospital. The move will add stress to the lives of people who are already in a weakened condition, she said.
Nadel added that after the closing of St. Vincent’s, she doesn’t like to see lower Manhattan hospitals cutting back.
"It’s jut one more piece of healthcare that gets taken away from us," she said.
Fred Winters, a spokesman for Downtown Hospital, said the unit became insolvent when the federal government recently changed its reimbursement method to reward larger programs.
"It’s become something that threatens the viability of the other services in the hospital," Winters said.
If the hospital kept the dialysis unit open, it would have to upgrade its equipment to meet federal and state health codes, which would be too expensive, Jeffrey Menkes, president of Downtown Hospital, said in a statement.
"The closing will be accomplished in a responsible manner and, as always, with patient safety and patient service as our primary considerations," Menkes said in the statement. "I am confident that we will work through this challenge together."
Inpatients at the hospital will still be able to receive dialysis as they need it.
