Photo by: Jim Henderson

According to state statistics, Long Island College Hospital in 2010 delivered 4,000 babies, removed 100 appendixes and performed 2,400 CT scans.

The shakeup of Brooklyn’s healthcare system could continue Thursday with a vote to shutter Long Island College Hospital.

The 506-bed LICH, located in Cobble Hill, faces its shutdown vote just two months after Interfaith Medical Center, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Trustees of the State University of New York, which owns the hospital, are meeting late Thursday to decide its fate.

As Brooklyn Bureau reported last fall, four other hospitals in Brooklyn face the prospect of closure or merger.

Hospitals citywide have struggled to adapt to changes in how healthcare is delivered and paid for.

Some medical facilities are saddled with more beds than are necessary in an era when outpatient procedures and short hospital stays are more common, state regulators have said. Because of the way insurance companies and Medicaid pay, routine medical treatment is less rewarding than specialized care. And hospitals must provide care even to the uninsured; they get government funding to do so, but still claim that the obligation is a financial burden.

Brooklyn hospitals, however, face particular challenges. A staggering 35 percent of borough residents with commercial insurance elect to go to Manhattan for care, along with 13.5 percent of residents with Medicaid. In a borough where 40 percent of the residents are on Medicaid, nearly one quarter are living in poverty, and 15 percent are uninsured, the flow of health care reimbursement dollars out of Brooklyn is creating a financial vacuum, putting the entire borough’s health care system at risk.

The other four hospitals that state officials have targeted for possible closure, merger or downsizing are Brookdale Hospital Medical Center, Brooklyn Hospital Center, Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.

With reporting by Ruth Ford.