The healthcare sector is entering into one of its most important years in decades, but many hospitals have been left behind.
Throughout 2013, 18 acute-care hospitals closed their doors, and there are many others — such as Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., Vidant Pungo Hospital in Belhaven, N.C., Lake Shore Health Care Center in Irving, N.Y., and Williamson (W.Va.) Memorial Hospital, to name a few — that could follow suit this year.
Here are 18 hospitals that closed in 2013, beginning with the most recent. Note: The following list only includes acute-care hospitals that have completely shut down, not those that have closed individual services, units or departments.
• Florala (Ala.) Memorial Hospital, a 28-bed, privately owned hospital, closed in late December without advanced notice to the city.
• Lee Regional Medical Center, a 70-bed hospital in Pennington Gap, Va., closed Oct. 1, partly due to Medicare reimbursement cuts under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
• Corcoran (Calif.) District Hospital, one of the last rural hospitals in the central San Joaquin Valley, ended its run as an acute-care provider this past fall, though its rural clinic remained open through Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health.
• Christus Health Shreveport-Bossier in Shreveport, La., closed the emergency department and inpatient and outpatient services at Christus Schumpert Medical Center, also in Shreveport.
• In August, Cozby-Germany Hospital, a 52-bed hospital in Grand Saline, Texas, closed its doors.
• Charlton Memorial Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital based in Folkston, Ga., became the third rural hospital in the state to shut down in August.
• After losing Medicare and Medicaid status and dealing with other legal issues, Shelby Regional Medical Center in Center, Texas, closed in July.
• This summer, less than three months after its CEO and CFO were arrested for alleged fraud, Sacred Heart Hospital in Chicago abruptly shut its doors.
• In June, Louisiana State University's W.O. Moss Regional Medical Center in Lake Charles ended operations under the state's massive privatization plan.
• Lakeside Health System in Brockport, N.Y., officially closed its 61-bed acute-care hospital, Lakeside Memorial Hospital, in April.
• Earl K. Long Medical Center, a 116-bed hospital in Baton Rouge that is part of LSU's health system, shuttered its doors in April.
• Los Angeles-based Pacific Health Corp. closed all four of its hospitals in California — Anaheim General Hospital, Bellflower Medical Center, Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center (and its Hawthorne campus) and Newport Specialty Hospital — after the for-profit chain ran into millions of dollars of legal fines and lawsuits.
• In March, Stewart-Webster Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital that had served the Richland, Ga., area for more than 60 years, officially shut down.
• The Texas Department of State Health Services ordered Renaissance Hospital Terrell (Texas) to shut down in February due to patient safety failures.
• Weeks after enforcing layoffs to deal with deteriorating finances, Calhoun Memorial Hospital in Arlington, Ga., officially closed its doors in February.
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