A doctor at Beth Israel hospital fell to his death this morning from his 17th-floor office balcony at the facility in an apparent suicide, police said.
Douglas Meyer, 44, plunged around 7:15 a.m. from a Baird Hall balcony at 350 E. 17th St. He landed on an air conditioning unit between two buildings, a hospital spokesman said.
His body was found by a security guard.
Meyer, an attending physician at the hospital’s division of digestive diseases, was on duty this morning, the spokesman said.
He was supposed to perform an endoscopy at the time of his death, said one nurse, who had tried unsuccessfully to call and page him for 20 minutes before the guard told her the grim news.
“We are totally shocked and distraught over this. He is a valuable member of our faculty,” said Dr. David Shulkin, CEO of Beth Israel.
“The staff is shocked,” he said.
Shulkin shot down rumors that Meyer had been fired.
“It is not true,” he insisted.
Meyer, a graduate of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, had been with Beth Israel since 2003.
He lived on the Upper West Side, and was unmarried.