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By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
Kings County Hospital Center, a member of New York City Health + Hospitals, located at 451 Clarkson Avenue in Brooklyn’s Kings County, has moved to decertify dozens of drug treatment beds to replace them with medical beds. As reported by Crain’s NY, the borough has been scrambling to provide enough medical beds for patients following the closure of nearby Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center.
As a result of the lack, which first began by the Covid-19 pandemic, the city’s public hospital has recently filed plans with the state to remove 25 substance use beds from the operating certificate, replacing them with 20-much needed medical/surgical beds. There will be no construction necessary to implement the change.
Kings County Hospital Center is a 624-bed public hospital in East Flatbush serving a large Medicaid and uninsured population. It is one of the few Chemical Dependency or drug and alcohol addiction rehab centers. The hospital’s 30-bed Chemical Dependence – Detoxification unit had been temporarily closed in March 2020, when all the beds were needed for the COVID-19 Emergency Plan.
After that, the Hospital moved to permanently close the detox unit, saying it was underutilized. This decision was aided by the shift in treatment of substance use disorders— away from inpatient care and toward Medication Assisted Treatment in an outpatient basis, which led to less beds required in the department. On the other hand, there has been great demand for medical/surgical beds at the hospital, in particular to ease congestion in the Hospital’s Emergency Department. Their emergency department admits an average of 18 patients daily, with admissions reaching up to 30 patients a day.
KCHC’s ED has seen a steady increase in visits from 83,629 visits in fiscal year 2021, reaching some 109,196 visits in 2023. The Hospital’s 246 existing med/surg beds are regularly at 100% occupancy. This is in part due to the closure of nearby Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. Also, Brooklyn has a large number of patients with an Alternate Level of Care (ALC) status—meaning while they are no longer acutely ill they can’t safely be discharged home or to a nursing home, also upping the needs for med/surg beds at KCHC, based on the Health Equity Impact Assessments and Certificate of Need applications filed by the hospital.
Kings County Hospital, founded in 1831, services an estimated surrounding community of over 800,000 people. Besides for the medical / surgical beds, the hospital also has about 32 intensive care beds, 30 maternity beds, 28 pediatric beds, 7 pediatric ICU beds, 30 total neonatal care beds for different stages, 23 physical rehab beds, and 8 coronary care use beds. Most notably, Kings County Hospital also boasts capacity of roughly 190 Psychiatric use beds.
The hospital is part of NYC Health + Hospitals, which is the largest provider of behavioral health in NYC. The system provides almost 60% of behavioral health services citywide serving more than 75,000 patients annually across emergency, inpatient and outpatient care.
