Jersey City hospital tells state it wants to close
Taken from NJ Spotlight News
, Anchor | November 14, 2025 | Health Care
November 14, 2025
Heights University Hospital in Jersey City could shutter within a matter of days after its owner Hudson Regional Health filed a request with the state to close the 153-year-old facility.
Hudson Regional Health says it will keep the emergency department open but that the rest of the acute-care hospital will go offline as soon as the state health department approves its Certificate of Need for closure.
Hudson Regional Health is laying blame on the state for not providing emergency funding needed to keep the full hospital open, saying they spent $300 million after the takeover, most of it at Heights, but that isn’t enough to dig the hospital out of a growing financial deficit.
“We are not happy we are here,” Hudson Regional Health CEO Dr. Nizar Kifaieh said at a press conference Friday morning. “I would directly address the governor and everybody else listening and watching: please support and help this hospital.”
As of Friday, just five patients were left in the hospital. By Saturday, Kifaieh said only the emergency department would be operating.
The announcement comes six months after Hudson Regional Health took over the cash-strapped Heights facility and two other hospitals in Hoboken and Bayonne in a bankruptcy deal with their former owner, CarePoint Health.
According to Hudson Regional Health, about 65% of patients at Heights – formerly Christ Hospital – are uninsured, low income or undocumented. On Friday, the state Department of Health said it advanced millions of dollars in charity care payments to the hospital to help pay for those costs.
“Hudson Regional Hospital has failed to fund their payroll this week and failed to fully perform as it represented in its Plan of Restructuring,” a health department spokesperson said in a statement. “It has not followed through on its commitments to the community it serves and to the State to turn things around after taking over the hospital.”
Health care union HPAE called the closure “illegal,” noting in a statement, “employees have been left without a paycheck for two weeks of work and without future employment.” About 120 staff members will be laid off, but Hudson Regional Health says the majority will be able to get jobs in the other three hospitals in the system.
The rest of the 16-acre site’s future is still unclear. Hudson Regional Health proposed developing the site to pay for improvements at the health facility. The city council in Jersey City is working on an ordinance to block residential units on the property.