Episcopal Health Services sells nursing home to Providence Care

Episcopal Health Services, which owns St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, sold its Bishop Henry B. Hucles Nursing Home in Brooklyn to Providence Care, Inc. for $29.5 million. The transaction was made official on July 17.
EHS officials said that operation of the 230-bed nursing home will continue uninterrupted. As of June 25, the facility had a 95.4 percent occupancy rate, according to the state Department of Health.
“The Bishop Hucles Home has been part of our Diocese of Long Island ministry for many years,” Bishop Lawrence C. Provenzano, head of the Episcopal Church on Long Island, who oversees EHS, said in a prepared statement. “Our board believes that Providence Care, Inc. which is wholly dedicated to nursing home, will serve it well.”
Bishop Hucles is one of two nursing homes EHS owns and was looking to sell. Also on the block is the Bishop Charles Waldo McLean Nursing Home in Far Rockaway. The potential sale of that facility was being reviewed by the state’s Hospital Review and Planning Council earlier this year. The state council approved the Bishop Hucles sale in November, St. John’s officials said.
A portion of the money from the sale will go to pay the nursing home’s bond payments and other outstanding debts. How specifically to use the remainder of the proceeds has yet to be determined by the hospital’s board. “In keeping with the mission of the diocese, proceeds from the sale of the nursing home will help our provision of health care services within Episcopal Health Services,” Bishop Provenzano stated in the release.

St. John’s is currently expanding its emergency department. Previously, Richard Brown, the hospital’s chief executive office, said that the first of three expansion phases would be completed by Christmas of this year, and the entire project should be finished in the next 18 months from now.
The planned expansion is expected to cost nearly $10 million and almost double the size of the current emergency area from 12,500-square-feet to 23,000. The original emergency department was designed to treat 15,000 patients per year. but it is now serving more than 40,000. It will include 19 main private treatment rooms, 21 internal disposition areas, six fast-track cubicles and 14 psychiatric treatment areas.
Also earlier this year, Bishop Provenzano announced that EHS was in negotiations with Rockville Centre-based Catholic Health Services about a possible affiliation. The Herald first reported on the discussions in March, and St. John’s and CHS officials both said that a decision was expected to be made within the next three months to move the discussions past the exploration stage. Earlier in July, Brown said: “[The talks] are proceeding and moving ahead in a positive direction, but no big news yet.”