SNCH’s proposed medical pavilion a ‘good first step’

Hospital officials discuss plans for 24/7 emergency facility

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“I’m glad to see that there’s a plan laid out — everything I see about the emergency room part of it looks really good,” East End resident Carol Henck, a nurse at Long Beach High School, said of South Nassau Communities Hospital’s plan to build a medical pavilion on the former Long Beach Medical Center campus.

LBMC has been shuttered since Hurricane Sandy, and residents and local officials have demanded more details about South Nassau’s plans to re-establish medical services on the barrier island ever since a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge approved LBMC’S sale to SNCH for $11.7 million nearly a year ago.

Henck was among the 100 residents who attended South Nassau’s Information Day at the Long Beach Hotel on March 18, where hospital representatives discussed plans to build a new off-campus, hospital-based emergency department that would operate 24/7 and accept ambulances. The $30 million to $40 million facility could also have suites for family medicine, behavioral health, dialysis and ambulatory surgery.

Plans call for the facility to be built on the south side of East Bay Drive, on property formerly occupied by abandoned homes that were damaged by Sandy. While South Nassau works to upgrade its urgent-care center into a temporary emergency department by July 1, the 30,000-square-foot pavilion would be the permanent facility hospital officials said they envisioned.

It would not, however, function as a full-service hospital which many residents and local officials have been calling for. Additionally, South Nassau said it has yet to determine how much of the $154 in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds it would spend in Long Beach, but maintains that its investment would be significant.

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