St. Vincent Medical Center In Downtown LA To Be Shut Down
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — St. Vincent Medical Center will be shut down after its owner was unable to sell the downtown LA hospital.
Verity Health System filed a motion for court permission to close the hospital, which is at 2131 W. 3rd St. A sale to KPC Group, which also included St. Francis Medical Center, and Seton Medical Center and Seton Coastside in San Mateo County fell through. Verity will reportedly continue operating the latter three hospitals.
"We are deeply saddened to announce the planned closure of St. Vincent Medical Center," Verity CEO Rich Adcock said in a statement. "This decision has not been taken lightly and comes only after exhausting every option to keep this hospital open."
Current patients will be transferred to nearby facilities and ambulance services will be diverted to nearby emergency rooms, including to those at eight hospitals located within a 3-mile radius of St. Vincent, according to Verity.
Evangeline Cue, 74, has been going to St. Vincent Medical Center for over 10 years. She said the hospital is very convenient because she lives across the street and all of her favorite specialists are just a few steps away.
"The attention of the doctor is incomparable to other hospitals where I have been. I love this place," said Cue.
The hospital employs about 1,100 people and it's not clear what will happen to those jobs.
"We found out yesterday and in three weeks we don't have a job," said X-ray technician Michael Gregorian who has worked at St. Vincent for two and a half years.
"I'm upset, absolutely. This is a job where I thought I was going to be for a long time. I wish the bureaucracy and the politics of everything would've made it so that they would've continued with the hospital that's been here for over 100 years and served the community for a long time," he said.
No exact date for closure has yet been released.
