Metro

LICH no longer accepting ambulance patients

The financially-strapped Long Island College Hospital in Downtown Brooklyn stopped accepting ambulance patients early this morning – the latest development in SUNY Downstate’s long-running battle to close the Cobble Hill hospital.

“A dire situation is developing at LICH where we have seen voluntary resignations … We have almost daily resignations,” LICH chief medical officer Dr. Michael Lucchesi said in a statement.

“Thus, ambulances will be diverted from LICH’s Emergency Department by the FDNY and patients from critical care units will be transferred to other hospitals.”

SUNY Downstate wants to shutter the 506-bed Cobble Hill hospital – which it said loses $4 million a month – but a lawsuit filed by doctor and nurse groups have held up the closure.

Yesterday, a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge ordered SUNY Downstate to keep staffing at the level it was before SUNY Downstate first tried to close the hospital earlier this year.

Doctor and nurse groups slammed the decision to turn away ambulances.

“We are astonished that in the face of a clear order to maintain operations at LICH, Downstate management has issued directives to divert ambulances and transfer patients from LICH,” said Concerned Physicians of LICH president Dr. Toomas Sorra.

“These directives unnecessarily compromise patient safety.”

FDNY spokesman Jim Long said that without LICH emergency patients would be taken to other Brooklyn hospitals or even Manhattan. He added that LICH wasn’t a trauma center so seriously injured patients wouldn’t have been taken there anyway.

jsaul@nypost.com