One closed its doors, forcing 177 nurses, doctors and staff out of work. Another slashed staff in half. A third resumed charging fees.
Many employees and suppliers haven't been paid since the end of last year.
The hospitals of Haiti are in critical condition, their bottom lines bleeding as patients receive free medical care after the earthquake.
"It's a catastrophe," said Dr. Michel Théard, who sits on the board of one struggling hospital, and operates a cardiology practice across the street from another that recently closed.
"A private hospital that now wants to survive is facing [competition from] free medical care, which is OK. But it's a new challenge for survival."
For months, Haitians in this quake-ravaged capital have received free medical care courtesy of foreign doctors, the government-run hospital and several private hospitals that suspended charging patients after the Jan. 12 quake. The impact is painfully visible in the empty operating rooms and idle equipment at Sacred Heart/CDTI.
"We cannot pay our employees," said Dr. Reynold Savain, whose hospital, Sacred Heart/CDTI was the site of Haiti's first organ transplant a year ago and today is the first post-quake hospital casualty.
On March 31, as the last of the foreign doctors packed up, Haiti's most modern hospital shut down.
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