Critics worry that these new medical complexes are no substitute for the hospitals they’ve replaced and may siphon off paying patients from them. Unlike a hospital, individual providers in a private medical complex are not required to provide charity care, nor do these complexes have nonprofit missions to serve a community’s health needs, although some tenants are nonprofits.

Nevertheless, these buildings are often ideal for medical uses — an emergency department can be repurposed as an urgent care center. Existing operating rooms can be used for outpatient surgical centers. And an inpatient floor is a natural fit for a subacute care facility. Added to that, the new use is certainly preferable to a deteriorating structure that contributes to urban decay.

Pull into the parking lot of Barnert Medical Arts Complex on a congested street in Paterson, and it might be mistaken for the hospital that closed here in 2008. Red signs direct visitors to an urgent care center that occupies the same space that the emergency department once used. The building also houses three surgical centers, a Planned Parenthood facility and Turning Point, the drug rehabilitation facility where Dennis Rodman stayed in January.

“This was a facility that essentially was empty — the community suffered,” said State Senator Bob Gordon, a Democrat representing parts of Bergen and Passaic Counties, who recently reintroduced legislation to provide developers with a tax credit if they repurpose closed hospitals for other medical uses. The developer “was able to transform this facility into one that better matched the needs of the community.”

The developer, Community Healthcare Associates of Bloomfield, N.J., bought the building in bankruptcy court in 2008. After a $25 million renovation, the facility now also offers a sleep center, a breast care center and a 54-bed subacute care facility that has crown molding, dark wood floors and plush waiting room furniture. An adult medical day care facility occupies the sixth floor of the building, which was once the maternity ward.