St. Luke’s Medical Center, a fixture of Phoenix health care for 100 years, will shutter its doors next month.
The hospital, part of the Dallas-based Steward Health Care System, had seen a dwindling number of patients access its operations, making it financially difficult to stay open, according to a letter from hospital President James Flinn.
As a result, the hospital at 1800 E. Van Buren St. will close its doors on Nov. 24. To read Flinn’s letter, click here.
“Less than 4% of local residents receive inpatient discharges at St. Luke’s,” 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 reportedly lost $7.2 million during 2018, according to data collected by the Arizona Department of Health Services. It was among the hospitals with the most losses in the Valley last year.
The hospital will transfer any remaining patients to Tempe St. Luke’s or Mountain Vista Medical Center in Mesa, two other Steward facilities in the Valley. Steward also recently reopened the Florence Hospital earlier this year.
The closure comes amid expansion in the Valley by other health care systems, notably Banner Health and Abrazo Health, both of which have grown their presence around the area in recent years.
St. Luke’s ranked No. 26 on the list of largest Valley hospitals as ranked by number of patient days, according to Business Journal research.