healthmedicinet

The abrupt and unexpected turnabout comes after weeks of protest and a lawsuit by labor unions and doctors seeking to keep the hospital open. The hospital, also known as LICH, serves brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods like Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, as well as lower-income areas like Red Hook.

“It’s a very positive step,” said Dr. Toomas Sorra, the president of Concerned Physicians of LICH. “I guess I would say that we are certainly cautiously optimistic.”

For several months, the hospital’s current operator — SUNY Downstate Medical Center, part of the State University of New York — has contended it had to close the hospital because it was losing $1 million a week and was a drain on the entire medical center. SUNY Downstate, which includes a medical school and two other facilities in Brooklyn, has financial problems of its own.

The proposed closing had been submitted to the State Health Department for approval, putting the Cuomo administration in the delicate position of shutting a popular hospital in the face of aggressive protest from powerful labor unions like 1199 SEIU and the New York State Nurses Association. The closing had been temporarily delayed because of a lawsuit filed by the doctors and unions.

But the reversal may be only a reprieve unless the state agrees to bail out the hospital or a new operator can be found.

“I think what is going to be happening is that the state is going to be working on a sustainability plan, and that involves a national search for an operator,” said Jill Furillo, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association.

Dr. Sorra said that over the past few days, lawyers for the unions and doctors had asked the Cuomo administration whether it was willing to support the hospital financially until a new operator could be found, and that the Health Department had indicated that it was.

Matt Wing, a spokesman for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, said the state had not promised any financial support to LICH. Steven Greenberg, a spokesman for SUNY Downstate, said that in the short term, the state had offered to accelerate some payments to Downstate and to defer some payments that Downstate owed the state, “thereby helping cash flow” through June.

By June, Mr. Greenberg said, Downstate is required by law to have a “sustainability plan” that would lay out a long-term strategy to keep it viable.

Dr. Sorra said the doctors and unions believed that SUNY might be attributing losses from other operations to LICH, and that one purpose of the lawsuit was to force SUNY to release more detailed financial records.

“Any suitor would be nuts to even consider looking at LICH unless accurate financials are divulged and unless the Department of Health is willing to back up this promise with money,” Dr. Sorra said.

Mr. Greenberg denied any misrepresentation, saying the hospital “lost money for 15 years before Downstate bought it, it has lost money the last two years since Downstate has owned it, and it continues to lose a million dollars a week.”