An ER, not a hospital, is set to open at St. Vincent's site

Residents of the West Village will soon see something unusual arriving at the shiplike building on Seventh Avenue that used to house part of St. Vincent’s Hospital: ambulances. Four years after St. Vincent’s closed, the hulking white building, between West 12th and West 13th Streets, is reopening in the coming days, not as a hospital, but as a free-standing emergency room. The new E.R., however, is part of a trend that has as much to do with a hospital’s bottom line as it does with providing acute care.