Mount Sinai Health System has filed plans with the state to close and relocate Beth Israel Hospital and to open a behavioral health center in the former Rivington House nursing home building on the Lower East Side.
Mount Sinai plans to build a 70-bed facility with an emergency room on 2nd Avenue near 13th Street. After the new building opens in the year 2023, the existing Beth Israel complex, which includes nearly 700 hospital beds will be shuttered. It’s part of a large-scale plan by the healthcare conglomerate to shift care from a single large facility to neighborhood health clinics in downtown Manhattan.
As first reported in December of 2018, Mount Sinai will also be shifting its behavioral care center from the Bernstein Pavilion to a newly renovated facility inside Rivington House. More from yesterday’s press release:
Included in the $1 billion Downtown plan is a $140 million commitment to create a comprehensive, community-oriented behavioral health center: The Mount Sinai Comprehensive Behavioral Health Center. The new facility, located at the site of the current Rivington House, will offer downtown residents a holistic approach to mental health and become a one-stop location for psychiatric, addiction, physical health, and social service needs. The new facility preserves all of the existing services at Mount Sinai Beth Israel and offers a host of new services, including intensive crisis and respite beds, partial hospitalization program, intensive outpatient program, mobile and in-home services, behavioral health care engagement teams, and primary care services. The site will not include methadone treatment services. “The model of care for the Mount Sinai Behavioral Health Comprehensive Center will not be available anywhere else in New York. This Center exemplifies Mount Sinai’s deep and longstanding commitment to behavioral health, and it is not simply a re-location or addition of services. It is a new, transformational model of care for people with behavioral health conditions that creates a fully integrated continuum of care in one location,” said Sabina Lim, MD, MPH, Vice President and Chief of Strategy, Behavioral Health, for the Mount Sinai Health System.
Rivington House, of course, has an infamous recent history. Developers intent on converting the former nursing home for AIDS patients into luxury condos purchased the building after the city mysteriously lifted deed restrictions on the property. Mount Sinai is leasing the building from Slate Property Group, part of a consortium which bought the property for $116 million. The Rivington House debacle has been one of the biggest scandals of the de Blasio administration.
