Long Island College Hospital, a financially troubled community hospital in Brooklyn, has been saved from the threat of closing or bankruptcy through a planned merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, a major public university and medical center, Gov. David A. Paterson and hospital officials said Thursday.

Long Island College Hospital, known as LICH, has been at risk of closing since at least 2008, when its parent company, Continuum Health Partners, announced that the hospital was straining under the weight of $170 million in capital debt and proposed to shut down its maternity and pediatric operations. The State Health Department denied Continuum’s 2008 plan to close maternity and pediatric operations, leading to the search for a partner.

Governor Paterson said Thursday that the state would provide $40 million to support the merger. In 2009 the state gave LICH $22 million to help stabilize itself and to make it more attractive to a prospective partner.

Hospital officials said the merger made sense because SUNY Downstate was already running a major part of its teaching program out of LICH, which is in the gentrifying Cobble Hill neighborhood. Under the agreement, officials said, LICH and Downstate’s teaching hospital, University Hospital of Brooklyn, will operate as a single hospital with two campuses.

Mr. Paterson said the agreement would “save Long Island College Hospital and protect health education and training in Brooklyn.”

Doctors in the pediatric and obstetric departments, which had fought to stay open, said they welcomed the long-term stability that a partnership with SUNY Downstate would provide.

“I think we’ll be able to get the best of both worlds: maintain our community hospital and get support academically and financially from an esteemed, well-known organization like the SUNY system,” said Dr. Hugh Gilgoff, medical director of the pediatric outpatient unit.

Dr. Gilgoff predicted that the merger would win over families who might now be traveling to Manhattan for specialty care. “Hopefully in a short time we will look back and see a big change, a very tangible marked difference, in how the community views LICH because of more support,” he said.

Dr. John C. LaRosa, president of SUNY Downstate, echoed Dr. Gilgoff’s sentiment. “In general the large hospitals in Manhattan use the community hospitals in the boroughs to feed them, and often control them,” he said. “It’s hard to run a hospital when you essentially send all your high-end stuff into Manhattan.”

LICH, founded in 1858 as a medical school and hospital, is licensed for 506 beds.

The deal is something of a victory for the governor, and it preserves LICH from the fate of two other New York City hospitals, St. Vincent’s in Greenwich Village and North General in Harlem, which closed this year, also because of financial problems.

The closing of St. Vincent’s and North General, which had been kept alive for many years despite operating losses and other debt, showed the weakness of the hospital industry during the recession, hospital officials said.

North General, which declared bankruptcy in June and closed in early July, was about $200 million in debt when it closed, and had been in debt almost constantly since it was created in 1979 as part of a political deal to serve Harlem. It has been replaced by a large government-subsidized primary care center run by the Institute for Family Health.

St. Vincent’s, which was more than $1 billion in debt, closed in April.

The state provided $14 million for an urgent care center and other health care services in the neighborhood to make up for the closing of St. Vincent’s.

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(Source: NY Times)