A judge has revoked SUNY Downstate’s controversial takeover and shutdown of a Brooklyn hospital — which includes real estate worth up to a billion dollars — in a bombshell order that slammed the operator’s “sinister purpose to seize its assets and dismantle the hospital.”
Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Carolyne Demarest originally signed off on SUNY Downstate’s takeover of the failing Long Island College Hospital in 2011, but yesterday withdrew that approval after SUNY ignored court orders to keep the Cobble Hill medical center open.
“Without a full hearing, it cannot be determined whether SUNY’s breach is the result of its own incompetence . . . or the original design and intent was to seize the very substantial assets of LICH and convert them to SUNY’s own purposes,” Demarest wrote.
“This court, and many of the other interested parties . . . may have been deliberately misled at the time the transfer was approved.”
SUNY Downstate said it took over LICH with “the best of intentions” and spent millions trying to revive the hospital.
“This is not about profits over patients, or a real-estate deal,” said spokesman Steven Greenberg. “SUNY has made clear it is exiting LICH so it can stabilize Downstate, and today’s judgment is another move in that direction.”
Doctor and nurse groups who fought to keep LICH open welcomed the order.
“This order validates our suspicion that SUNY took over LICH with the intention of profiting off of the real estate — valued at up to $1 billion dollars,” said Jill Furillo, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association. “We don’t want that hospital turned into luxury condominiums.”
Demarest said in her order that control of LICH should revert back to Continuum Health Partners, but a Continuum spokesman said, “We cannot reassume management of LICH.”