WASHINGTON -- Friday was the last day of operations for much of Providence Hospital in Northeast, D.C., leaving an expanding health care desert on the impoverished east side of the city.
But the shutdowns that began with the end of business Friday are not happening without a last ditch attempt by Mayor Muriel Bowser to force the money-losing hospital to stop the closures.
The Bowser administration is suing, according to sources with knowledge of the plan.
Already Providence is being forced by the city to keep operating a bare-bones emergency room and a small five-bed unit to serve the community at least until the end of April 2019.
According to sources, the city is likely to argue in court that the rest of the hospital needs to stay up and running to ensure safety in the ER and to comply with the hospital's operating license, which the city forced it to renew under a plan to extend emergency services for five additional months.
Providence lost nearly $170 million dollars in the past six years with a 48 percent decline in patients. Most are on Medicare and Medicaid.
Government and private insurers have put intense pressure on the hospital industry nationwide in an effort to hold down costs, leaving hospitals like Providence, which serve poorer and rural communities, with few options to absorbing the financial impact.
The national largest non-profit Catholic health care system owns Providence, which was founded 157 years ago by nuns during the American Civil War.
In 2017, the Ascension Health Care system announced plans to shut down its acute care inpatient hospital services and convert its campus on Varnum St. NE into an outpatient services center.
Ascension would continue to operate a nursing home and rehab center as well as a senior living center on the campus.
Critics accuse Ascension Health of abandoning its religious mission to care for the poor.
