South Nassau project gets under way

The South Nassau Communities Hospital Emergency Department expansion project is under way.

The emergency room will continue to function even as sections of it are rebuilt, renovated or removed. The Emergency Department snakes around the current machine room, which is in the center of the hospital.

The first phase of work involved moving supply chain staff out of their area and converting it into emergency room space. This will allow work to remove the machine room to begin.

“The machine room is a complex area — it supports the entire west wing of the hospital,” said the facility’s president and CEO, Richard Murphy. “It houses electrical, HVAC, chilled water, and all of that has to be dismantled and relocated. We set up the supply chain area as a swing space so we can remove pieces of the machine room. That should be ready to go in about six weeks.”

Over the next two years, the entire emergency room will be revamped. It now handles about 35,000 visits per year, and the plan is to increase that to 65,000 and potentially up to 80,000 visits per year. The new emergency space will have individual rooms, not the cubbies with curtains that exist now, with room for visitors. There will be specific areas for pediatrics and behavioral patients.

The rooms will have state-of-the-art break-away glass fronts and walls, Murphy explained, that will “break away” in the event of an emergency to allow the movement of large machines like ventilators and heart machines. The new Emergency Department will have full isolation capacity as well as a full trauma area with rooms that are operation-room grade, in the event that a patient must be operated on immediately. In addition, there will be a new waiting room.

Once the Emergency Department is finished, work will begin on new operating theaters, the operation supply floor and a new intensive care facility.

To date, $4.3 million of the $10 million fundraising goal has been raised. The Emergency Department project is slated to cost $60 million, and the entire hospital project is estimated to cost $130 million.

“What I find shocking,” said Joel Schneider, chair of the Emergency Department Expansion Capital Fundraising Campaign, “is people do everything to promote and save their lives. They take vitamins, try and control their weight, but they forget the most important component, that unexpected, life-threatening acute event which hits everybody, every family, everyone. People contribute to other charitable hospitals, even hospitals in New York City, but when you’re clutching your chest and have minutes to live, isn’t it important to have the best possible resources in your backyard?”

“We take people on tours, show them the labs and introduce them to the cardiology department,” Murphy said. “We are a Level 2 trauma facility. Having the best emergency care — it’s like life insurance.”

Contributions can be made at www.lifesaver.org.