When someone recently got stuck in an elevator at a New Jersey hospital, the serviceman wouldn’t make repairs until a check was hand-delivered as payment in advance.

When another New Jersey hospital completed construction of a flashy new building, it was unable to equip it because the hospital is overwhelmed by debt. The new building is sitting empty and the hospital is likely to be sold to another hospital – for nothing.

As noted here last week, there is no question that America’s health-care system is in crisis. But if you want to see where U.S. hospitals are likely to find themselves sooner rather than later, consider the number of hospitals in New Jersey that are on life support.

* The Passaic Beth Israel Regional Medical Center is so low on cash that it has been on the brink of shutting down twice. A bankruptcy judge has approved its sale to another hospital in Passaic that is in almost as bad shape.

* The St. Joseph’s Healthcare System, which runs several North Jersey hospitals, has a $450 million budget, but is barely breaking even and can’t afford to replace important but aging equipment.

* The St. Barnabas Health Care System, the state’s largest hospital group, is on its knees because it has been forced to cough up $265 million to settle a federal lawsuit over billing fraud.

* Repeated scandals have rocked the state’s premier hospital — the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and an affiliate, University Hospital in Newark — which I recently blogged about in a post entitled New Jersey’s Biggest Mob Family.

Some of these hospitals’ wounds are self inflicted, to be sure. But with occupancy rates plummeting and other trends conspiring, odds are that at least 10 New Jersey hospitals will go bankrupt in coming months and the underlying reasons are beginning to eat away at hospitals in other states like an infection that is resistant to antibiotics.

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