Storm clouds gather over Kings County Hospital Center, a public hospital. While the Health & Hospital Corporation that runs New York City's public hospital system faces its own challenges, other nonprofit hospitals are threatened with closure or merger.

Photo by: Jim Hendersen

Storm clouds gather over Kings County Hospital Center, a public hospital. While the Health & Hospital Corporation that runs New York City’s public hospital system faces its own challenges, other nonprofit hospitals are threatened with closure or merger.

Brooklyn’s hospitals are in extremis, with at least five of its now 13 hospitals on life support, health care professionals warned this past Friday at a public hearing in borough hall.

Without a significant infusion of cash, testimony indicated that Brooklyn’s poorest neighborhoods are going to be left stranded by lack of access to acute care facilities—a situation made all the more dire by breaking news that morning that the trustees of SUNY Downstate had voted to close the 506-bed Long Island College Hospital in Downtown Brooklyn to prevent it from bankrupting the entire SUNY hospital system.