Charleston Memorial Hospital to be closed

When the Charleston County Hospital opened in 1965, the facility boasted an intercom system and air conditioning. The top price per day for a private room was $22.

Now, the hospital known as Charleston Memorial will close its doors during the next few months.

It is an aging building, and the hospital's in-patient beds have dwindled from about 100 more than 40 years ago to the current 20-bed transitional unit for patients awaiting placement in long-term care facilities.

Medical University of South Carolina President Ray Greenberg said, "It's an old facility. It's expensive to maintain. It really can't house contempo-

-rary health care without significant changes to it."

Medical University Hospital Medical Director Patrick Cawley announced Monday that Charleston Memorial's emergency department, which treats about 12,000 people per year, will be absorbed by the main university hospital, and other clinical functions will move to Ashley River Tower.

Most of the 116 affected employees will be reassigned, but 14 positions will be terminated, he said. The changes will occur during the next two to three months.

"The plan has always been to reduce services of Charleston Memorial Hospital after opening Ashley River Tower," Cawley said. The new hospital opened in February.

Greenberg said that while the budget did not drive the decision, it does have implications. A modest amount of money, between $1 million and $2 million, will be saved, he said.

The Legislature recently cut the state budget, eliminating more than $14 million in state-appropriated funds for MUSC.

Greenberg issued an open letter to MUSC employees on Monday stating that a comprehensive plan for dealing with the cuts is expected by mid-November. The letter states that officials will first turn to limiting hiring, using non-state sources for salaries and decreasing outside personnel before implementing leaves of pay, "or the approach of last resort — layoffs."

Charleston Memorial is part of the Medical University Hospital Authority, which does not receive state-appropriated funds but is feeling the pinch of budget cuts through reduced Medicaid reimbursement and low patient census.

The hospital building will be used as office space, for partial hospitalization of psychiatric patients and one or two clinics, Cawley said.

The hospital first opened in 1953 as the Charleston County Tuberculosis Hospital, later becoming Pinehaven Tuberculosis Hospital.

In 1965, the hospital was expanded and repurposed into a county hospital providing indigent care. Greenberg said, "Historically, uninsured and underinsured often went there," he said.

But a 1986 federal law leveled indigent care among all hospitals that participate in Medicare, making it illegal for patients to be denied emergency care based on ability to pay.

The Medical University of South Carolina bought Charleston Memorial from Charleston County eight years ago. For more than a decade prior to the sale, the county paid MUSC to run the hospital.