The hospital, which opened more than 100 years ago, is shutting down due to dwindling patient volumes, St. Luke’s Medical Center President James Flinn wrote in a letter to the local community.
“Less than 4 percent of local residents receive inpatient discharges at St. Luke’s,” Mr. Flinn wrote. “On any given day, St. Luke’s has 70 patients in the hospital out of a total capacity of 219. To put it another way, each night, two out of three hospital beds are empty at St. Luke’s. Over the past two years, St. Luke’s occupancy rate has remained below 40 percent, and emergency department visits have decreased by 16 percent.”
St. Luke’s will shut down its emergency room Nov. 23 and transfer any remaining patients to two other hospitals owned by Steward — Tempe (Ariz.) St. Luke’s Hospital and Mountain Vista Medical Center in Mesa.
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