LI hospitals, clinics awarded $112M in state grants

The state has awarded $112.3 million to Long Island hospitals and clinics for projects ranging from repairs at Nassau University Medical Center to building an emergency department in East Hampton.

The 16 grants, part of $1.5 billion statewide announced March 4, are intended to help health care providers involved in New York’s Delivery System Reform Incentive Program, or DSRIP.

Under the program, up to $6.42 billion will go to safety-net or public hospitals and their community collaborators statewide if they cut avoidable hospital use among Medicaid recipients by 25 percent by the end of 2019. To do that, hospitals and community organizations must work together to improve access and coordination of patients’ care. These grants — an addition to the $6.42 billion — are meant to assist with that.

“We have a responsibility to continue to make critical capital and infrastructure improvements that transform our health care system,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement. “This funding allows them to do just that.”

The awards include $24.1 million to NUMC, the hub for the Nassau-Queens DSRIP participants.

Dr. Victor Politi, chief executive of NuHealth, which includes NUMC, said $11.1 million will go to repairs and upgrades to the 19-story East Meadow hospital. The remaining $13 million will be used to help pay down the hospital’s $230 million county-guaranteed long-term debt.

“This money goes to help the most vulnerable population, which we serve,” he said.

Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, part of Northwell Health, is getting $24.8 million.

Joseph Schulman, executive director for Northwell Health Solutions, the health system’s care management organization, said $17.8 million would go to expanding health information technology to better coordinate and manage patient care both internally and with DSRIP partners, including NUMC. Integrating medical care, in part by linking medical data electronically, is the holy grail of health care under the Affordable Care Act.

Another $7.1 million will go toward creating primary care services next to LIJ’s emergency department. Michael Goldberg, LIJ’s executive director, said volume at the hospital’s emergency department had doubled in the past six or seven years as other hospitals in Queens closed. A goal of the state’s program is to reduce use of the emergency department for nonemergency care. By offering primary care next door, Goldberg said, the hope is to cut unnecessary emergency room admissions.

Catholic Health Services of Long Island, with its six hospitals, is getting $19.7 million to strengthen its health information technology. The money will be used to deploy or upgrade electronic medical records and link them and other data to health care providers, the health system said.

Hudson River HealthCare, a not-for-profit based in Peekskill that provides primary health care to underserved people at nine sites on Long Island, received $21.5 million for three sites: Wyandanch, which will receive $8 million, Patchogue, which was awarded $8.77 million, and Brentwood, which will receive $4.7 million.

Southampton Hospital received $10 million toward building a facility with a free-standing emergency department, diagnostics and doctors’ offices in East Hampton.

Robert Chaloner, Southampton’s chief executive, said the facility would help residents on the South Fork — especially in summer when travel times to Southampton from other South Fork villages can take hours.

Chaloner said he anticipated the facility would cost about $30 million and the hospital soon would begin fundraising for the remaining $20 million. He said the hospital had been talking with East Hampton planning officials about possible locations and it had engaged the international architecture firm Perkins Eastman to come up with preliminary diagrams. If all goes well, Chaloner said, the facility should open in 2020.

“Our community really needs it,” he said.