Dolan Family Health Center to move to Huntington Station to be closer to its patients
Dolan Family Health Center staff, from left to right, Lee Raifman, assistant vice president of operations, Dr. William C. Gehrhardt, medical director, Dolores Thompson, chair of the advisory board, and Saadia Z. Yunus, vice chair of the advisory board. The Northwell Health facility will be moving next year from Greenlawn to a former bank building in the heart of Huntington Station on New York Avenue. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
The Dolan Family Health Center will soon be closer to the patients it serves after it moves from Greenlawn to Huntington Station.
In the fall of 2023 a former bank building at 1572 New York Ave. will be the new home of a renamed state-of-the-art health care facility operated by Northwell Health’s Huntington Hospital.
Dr. Nick Fitterman, executive director of Huntington Hospital, says the facility is being moved to increase clinical square footage and for the convenience of its patients, a third of whom have difficulty getting to the Greenlawn location.
“We decided to do this a couple of years ago,” Fitterman said. “The new location aligns itself with public transportation and it's right in the heart of Huntington Station, so a lot of people will be able to walk there.”
The center will offer the same preventive care, health maintenance and other services for children and adults, including pediatrics, obstetrics and adult medicine.
The center mainly serves people who are undocumented, underinsured and uninsured, Fitterman said. The center serves about 10,000 patients a year.
It will cost $9 million to move from the current location and establish the new facility, Fitterman said. A $1 million grant from the New York State Assembly will assist with construction costs at the new center, which is being leased, Fitterman said. When it opens, the facility will be known as the Northwell Family Health Center at Huntington.
Dix Hills resident Saadia Yunus and her family have been patients at the Dolan center for 18 years. She is so committed to the center that she recently took on the role of vice chair of its community advisory board.
“The new location is where the main community is and it makes it more accessible,” Yunus said. “It’s what the Dolan center is all about: serving the community and going right to the heart of the community.”
The facility opened in 1995 on Pulaski Road, just east of Park Avenue. At the time, center officials said there was a great need for a facility that served low-income patients and those who could not afford health insurance. At the time the closest county-run clinic was in Wyandanch.
The Greenlawn center is named for the Dolan Family Foundation, which is run by the family of Charles Dolan, founder of Cablevision. (Pat Dolan, Charles' son, owns Newsday.)
Dr. William Gehrhardt, medical director at the Dolan center since 2009, said the new location would continue a legacy of high-quality health care and offer needed specialty services, including dentistry and addressing food insecurity.
“We take care of the community and believe in having professional relationships with our patients,” he said. “We know them, they know us. We care about them and the community."
Fitterman agreed.
“Our mission is to raise the health of the community and that means stretching outside the walls of the hospital, and that’s what the Dolan health center helps us do,” Fitterman said.
