Jersey City residents, officials condemn hospital closure at state hearing

At long-delayed hearing, residents pressed state officials to restore healthcare services at site of Christ Hospital

Wait times of several hours to see a doctor. Grueling overnight shifts for resident physicians. Patients lying in hallways because there aren’t enough beds, and ambulances being diverted.

At a long-awaited state hearing Thursday evening, residents lined up to testify, denouncing the loss of the facility more than five months after its operator abruptly shut it down.

Hudson Regional Health (HRH), the hospital’s owner, initially shut down inpatient care and other patient services at the facility formerly known as Christ Hospital last November. Then, this past March, the company shuttered the emergency room entirely, permanently closing the hospital without completing the state-mandated approval process.

Danielle Dadamo, a lifelong Jersey City resident who was born at Christ Hospital, said her parents received cancer care and end-of-life care there. She said the hospital, which was founded in 1872 by local clergy and the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, served the community for generations because there was and still is a vital need for it.

“Every day without access to an ER on Palisades Avenue creates compounding harm to our entire community,” Dadamo said. “It means ambulances traveling farther. It means greater pressure on Jersey City’s remaining hospital, and during a heart attack, stroke, or other life-threatening emergencies, it means losing precious minutes. Those minutes matter.”

Dadamo added that it is absurd to contemplate a future where a city of more than 300,000 people has only one hospital, which also serves as a regional trauma center.

“When a hospital closes, the patients don’t disappear. The emergencies don’t disappear. They go somewhere else,” she said.

About 70 people attended the two-hour public hearing at Hudson County Community College, including local politicians and members of the New Jersey Legislature.

“After the chaos and the abrupt closures, we both really need the services and have no faith that HRH can be the steward of providing those,” said state Assemblywoman Katie Brennan (D-Hudson), who lives in Jersey City.

Brennan advocated for a public hospital model to replace HRH’s private operations at the site.

“What happened at Christ Hospital is a warning about what happens when private operators treat hospitals like real estate assets instead of community lifelines,” she said.

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Under state law, an operator must file a “certificate of need” application with the New Jersey State Health Planning Board to close a hospital. The board reviews the application and, following a public hearing, recommends whether the state health commissioner should approve the shutdown.

Hudson Regional Health took control of Christ Hospital in May 2025 as part of the previous owner’s court-approved bankruptcy restructuring. But the healthcare network did not wait for the regulatory process to conclude before shuttering Heights University Hospital entirely.

“We all saw how Heights Hospital closed outrageously and abruptly without completing the required certificate of need process,” Dia Bryant, Jersey City’s deputy mayor of education, testified at the hearing.

Bryant noted she was speaking on behalf of Mayor James Solomon and the city administration. She concluded her remarks by urging the state to preserve the site’s medical accreditation while Jersey City searches for a “truly trusted healthcare provider” to take over the property.

A coalition of 70 community organizations is also calling on the New Jersey Department of Health to reject HRH’s closure application.

“We urge the Department of Health to keep their license active and pursue receivership,” said Beverly Brown Ruggia, the financial justice program director for New Jersey Citizen Action. “The suspension of services since March has already devastated Jersey City emergency care and cut its hospital beds by more than half.”

In a written statement to the press, Hudson Regional Health spokesman Vijay Chaudhuri blamed the closure on historical financial circumstances beyond the operator’s control.

“Years of severe mismanagement by prior operators, a growing number of uninsured patients, an antiquated facility, and significant cuts to government funding resulted in unsustainable financial losses,” Chaudhuri said in a written statement. “Faced with those conditions, and in an effort to preserve the broader healthcare system serving Hoboken, Bayonne, and Secaucus, the difficult decision to suspend services at Heights University Hospital was made”.

Chaudhuri said that HRH has since withdrawn its formal closure application, but said New Jersey Department of Health officials previously stated that a withdrawal is legally impossible once a hospital has already been closed

At the hearing, residents described an overburdened emergency system and surging wait times at Jersey City Medical Center following the closure. Several speakers worried that longer travel times for emergency care could, in some cases, mean the difference between life and death.

“Where are people supposed to go? Are they supposed to fall ill and stay home?” asked Jersey City resident Aaron Weiner. “Allowing the closure of this hospital creates a precedent that serving a death sentence on a community in violation of the law is acceptable. Closing down was not the only way to handle this. It was a deliberate choice to liquidate our community to pad their bottom line.”

Weiner noted that the closure has pushed both Jersey City and Hoboken medical centers consistently to maximum capacity, forcing ambulances to be diverted to other facilities.

“We’ve all heard the saying that during a medical emergency every second counts,” Weiner said, adding that allowing the hospital to close was entirely unacceptable. He said the owner has demonstrated an inability to act as a fiduciary to the community, proving instead to be an “active opponent” of it.

“The ask is simple,” Weiner concluded. “Please force HRH to divest itself of Christ Hospital and put it under receivership so we can get ER services and emergency capacity back up and running ASAP, with a longer-term plan to have a responsible entity serving the community.”

Ben Silva, a union representative for the 220 nurses at Christ Hospital, testified that he experienced the systemic strain firsthand as a patient in the Jersey City Medical Center emergency room last week.

“It’s packed. We need more beds. We need Christ Hospital. But most importantly, Hudson Regional cannot be trusted,” Silva said.

Silva claimed HRH had no intention of running a hospital long-term. He told the board that while nurses received a vague notice about layoffs, the city received a development plan for 2,000 luxury condos on the site, with no mention of medical services. The land the hospital sits on is owned by a separate LLC. The Jersey City Times reported Aug. 26 that the owner of the land owes more than $3 million in back taxes to the city.

“The plan all along was a real estate grab,” Silva said. “So you need to enforce the law, make Hudson Regional follow the law, and hold them accountable, because they will not do it themselves. They will tear down this hospital and leave our city with nothing.”

Beyond emergency services, some residents noted that Christ Hospital historically served a large underserved population heavily dependent on charity care, self-pay options, or managed Medicaid.

“People deserve to have access to high-quality health care regardless of their ability to pay and regardless of the wealth that’s in their ZIP code,” said Erika Lewy, a resident and member of the Save Our Hospital Coalition.

Lewy said the hospital sits on land controlled by a corporate luxury developer motivated by profit margins rather than local medical necessities.

“That puts his motives in direct competition with our needs as a community,” she said, pointing to a lack of regulatory enforcement. “Due to the lack of accountability with HRH, we’re the ones who are getting screwed. We have no ER, we have no urgent care, because HRH knows there are no consequences.”

Lewy joined the call for state intervention, citing what she said was a lack of public investment and an intentional degradation of services by the current ownership.

Some residents also expressed concern over losing one of the city’s few dedicated resources for mental health and addiction treatment, warning the loss could exacerbate the local housing and public health crises. According to recent data from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, unsheltered homelessness has more than tripled across the state since 2022.

“Just today, a neighbor called about another neighbor who was struggling with addiction and needed an ambulance to come support her,” said Jersey City Councilman Jake Ephros, whose ward borders the hospital site. “I was fielding that call, and I just thought about how much easier this would be if we didn’t have to send this person all the way downtown in rush hour traffic to Jersey City Medical Center.”

Debbie White, president of Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE)—the union representing the hospital’s nurses—said HRH systematically mishandled the shutdown.

“The employer just sort of pretended like they didn’t even have a union. Just like they pretend as if they don’t have the Department of Health to answer to,” White said. “It was the systematic deconstruction of a hospital.”

The financial fallout has also taken a severe toll on long-term former staff members. Mary Dickinson, who worked as a nurse at the facility for nearly 45 years, said the union’s contract guaranteed one week of severance pay for every year of service at the hospital.

Following her layoff after the closure, Dickinson only received 13 weeks of severance. She said the current ownership calculated her payout based solely on the years since CarePoint, the previous operator, acquired the hospital in 2012, effectively erasing more than three decades of her employment history.

The union is currently in arbitration to secure full severance packages for Dickinson and other affected members. While Dickinson noted she was fortunate that her personal savings allowed her to transition smoothly into retirement, she said HRH’s handling of the shutdown left her and her colleagues feeling deeply betrayed.

“I think what’s most egregious about the whole thing is how they went about it,” Dickinson testified. “They just lied right and left, and they had a plan all along.”

Thursday’s session served as the makeup date for an initial April 15 public meeting. That original meeting was canceled just minutes before its scheduled start after HRH successfully secured a temporary restraining order from a judge.

Department of Health representatives did not share any additional details beyond announcing the strict procedural rules for the Thursday evening hearing. They also did not indicate how they intend to proceed.

Public officials and residents who spoke at the hearing outlined a vision for a joint effort among the city, the state, and the New Jersey Department of Health to restore local healthcare access and prevent future closures. Some speakers urged the state to level heavy financial penalties against HRH and reject its closure application outright, while others pressed the city to seize the property via eminent domain to clear the way for a public or nonprofit hospital.

Residents also called on state legislators to pass a bill introduced this past June that would significantly increase state fines and automatically block certificates of need for hospital operators that flout New Jersey’s healthcare regulations.

Editor’s note: Members of the public can still submit comments to the board that is evaluating HRH’s application to close by writing to boards-councils@doh.nj.gov with the subject line “Heights Public Comment” through Sept. 3, 2026.