Here are four hospitals that have closed or filed for bankruptcies in September:
1. Avail Hospital Lake Charles (La.) permanently closed Sept. 29 — no reason was given for its closure. The 33,000-square-foot facility was billed as Louisiana's first microhospital when it opened in 2017.
2. New York City-based Mount Sinai Health will close its Beth Israel campus in the city and could open a smaller facility downtown in the future. The closure will be gradual after an initial reduction of the inpatient bed count at the 696-bed teaching hospital, with the eventual shuttering expected to take a few years.
3. The Hospital at Westlake Medical Center, a physician-owned hospital in Westlake Hills, Texas, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The hospital had significant debt before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pandemic exacerbated the situation.
4. St. Margaret's Health, which has been closed since June, filed two petitions of Chapter 11 bankruptcy for its St. Margaret's Spring Valley (Ill.) and St. Margaret's Peru (Ill.) facilities. The health system reported that it had at least 1,000 creditors who are owed somewhere between $10 million and $50 million. Peoria, Ill.-based OSF Healthcare received approval to take over the Peru facility.