Deal keeps Peninsula Hospital Center open

Far Rockaway's cash-strapped Peninsula Hospital Center was spared at the last minute and will stay open, saving 800 jobs and its nursing home.

After four weeks of haggling with the state, a financial plan to keep the 100-year-old hospital afloat has been approved by the New York State Health Department. Peninsula was to have shut down this week.

The financial plan was written by Revival Home Health Care in Brooklyn, which will take over the troubled hospital that is estimated to be $60 million in the red.

The hospital will be managed by Revival, a Jewish Orthodox for-profit group that offers home care services in the tristate area. Because of the Friday Sabbath, there was no comment from Revival.

Jeffrey Gordon, a Health Department spokesman, said in a statement on Friday: "The plan submitted by Peninsula and its new partner, Revival, has demonstrated that they have sufficient resources to take care of patients. As such, we have agreed to discontinue the diversion of ambulances from Peninsula Hospital."

Last week, the Health Department ordered that ambulances not take patients to Peninsula because of its dwindling supplies.

Louis Caucig, a member of the hospital's board of directors, was jubilant Friday. He was one of several hospital board members, local elected officials, union representatives and hospital staff that worked around the clock to keep the hospital open.

"We saved the hospital and 800 jobs," said Caucig. "I live in the Rockaways and if Peninsula was to close down it would have put the Rockaways in peril" because the nearest hospital is miles away.

Peninsula will have to declare bankruptcy next week and its board of directors will have to be dissolved before Revival takes over, Caucig said.

The hospital faced shuttering after its previous management company, Medisys Health Network, bailed on the facility.