Mercy Hospital School of Nursing, which opened 108 years ago in Charlotte, will close after current students graduate in 2016.

Officials of Carolinas HealthCare System, which has two other nursing schools in Charlotte and Concord, said the decision has nothing to do with the quality of Mercys program but was the result of an assessment of what is best for the system.

This was not easy, said Dr. Mary Hall, senior vice president for medical education and chief academic officer. The school has been around for a long time. Theyve had a high-quality school.

Hall notified faculty members, students and alumni of the school on Sept. 12. She said officials at Carolinas HealthCare have been reviewing nursing programs for the past year or two.

The decision comes as the system looks for ways to trim costs. Earlier this month, Carolinas HealthCare CEO Michael Tarwater announced the elimination of more than 100 management positions as part of a goal to cut $110 million in expenses from next years budget. He said the cuts are necessary, in part, because of declining reimbursements from federal programs and the refusal by both Carolinas to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.

Carolinas HealthCare came to own the Mercy nursing school in 1995, when it purchased Mercy Hospital and Mercy Hospital South (now Carolinas Medical Center-Mercy and Carolinas Medical Center-Pineville, respectively) from the Sisters of Mercy, based in Belmont. The school has graduated almost 3,000 nurses over the years. The last class of 30 was enrolled in August.

The Mercy school, near Interstate 77 and West Arrowood Road, has 19 faculty members, including 17 registered nurses. Hall said shell encourage them to remain as long as the school has students.

Carolinas HealthCare also operates nursing schools at Carolinas College of Health Sciences on the campus of Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte and at Cabarrus College of Health Sciences, which it acquired with the purchase of CMC-NorthEast (formerly NorthEast Medical Center) in Concord in 2007.

Hall said those two schools produce a total of about 200 graduates a year, more than enough to supply nurses needed for Carolinas HealthCare facilities. We didnt hire all of the nurses that graduated, she said. They definitely go other places, too.

Mercy is one of two remaining North Carolina nursing schools that issue diplomas instead of college degrees. The other diploma program is at Watts School of Nursing in Durham.

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Charlottes century-old Mercy nursing school to close