An 11th-hour deal will keep Interfaith Medical Center open for the time being.
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office has agreed to keep the hospital open with state funds.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health said that the state will provide the funds to allow operations at the facility to continue through March 7, 2014.
Employees were celebrating Friday afternoon because Friday was the day that a bankruptcy judge was supposed to approve the closure plan, meaning that the hospital would have begun shutting down the day after Christmas.
Bankruptcy proceedings have been going on for months because management says that the hospital is losing $ 3 million per month.
There are more than 1,500 in the hospital that serves thousands of inpatients and as many as 250,000 outpatients per year.
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio was among the politicians fighting for the hospital’s survival as public advocate.
“In terms of Interfaith, I am committed to making sure that community has access to health care locally,” de Blasio said. “I’ve spent a lot of time at Interfaith, a lot of time with the hard-working people who work at Interfaith. I want to make sure we protect the health needs of the community. We are working closely as we speak with the state to make sure that there are efforts in place to continue health care at Interfaith while we seek a larger solution there.”
The hope now is that the federal government will grant the state’s Medicaid waiver, which will provide an injection of money into Interfaith and allow it to stay open longer.
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=19496
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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