Catholic Health opens new ambulatory center, focusing on cardiovascular services, in East Hills

Catholic Health is opening a new ambulatory center with advanced imaging for its cardiovascular patients in East Hills.

Catholic Health St. Francis Heart Center, which will open Sept. 29 in Suite B of the 2200 Northern Blvd. building, is the health network's latest outpatient center, joining a cancer center and physicians partners practice, also in East Hills.

Catholic Health recently opened a multispecialty care center in Melville, which also includes an ambulatory and urgent care facility.

The new location "addresses a need for outpatient cardiovascular services in Nassau County," Dr. Patrick O'Shaughnessy, president and CEO of Catholic Health, said in a news release.

Catholic Health's new ambulatory care centers reflect a growing trend on Long Island  in which major health care networks — including Stony Brook Medicine, NYU Langone and Mount Sinai — are opening outposts away from their main hospitals.

Debbie Dimanche-Kearse, assistant vice president of ambulatory services at St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center in Roslyn said Catholic Health developed the facility because St. Francis Hospital became too congested due to constantly increasing patient numbers.

The new center, she said, will see patients who are well enough to receive outpatient care. 

The new 28,000-square-foot facility includes 45 treatment rooms, an imaging center and offices for physicians and health care workers.  With 150 employees, the center expects to see 200 to 300 patients a day, Monday through Friday.

“This new St. Francis Heart Center directly benefits our patients, as it facilitates the process for our outstanding cardiovascular experts to work together in a collaborative way to deliver exceptional treatment to those coping with heart disease,"  Dr. Charles L. Lucore, president of St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center, wrote in an email to Newsday. 

Catholic Health's newest ambulatory center has the potential to make "accessing care more convenient," said Wendy Darwell, president of the Suburban Hospital Alliance of New York State, which advocates on behalf of hospitals throughout the state.

"It's driven by advances in technologies that make it possible to move out of a hospital setting. You can't just build a new hospital, but you can extend care," she said. "There is value to that. Outpatient ambulatory care encompasses a lot of different things, so it's important to be done with safety guardrails in terms of patient quality."

Darwell said outpatient centers and urgent care facilities also reduce the volume of ER visits.

"When I was a kid, if you twisted your ankle, you went to the emergency room," she said. "There certainly are opportunities to fill that spectrum of care outside the ER, and we've seen that happen."

Ilene Corina, president of Pulse Center for Patient Safety Education & Advocacy, said that outpatient centers are helpful as long as there are safeguards in place if a patient has an emergency during a procedure. She said that a facility like Catholic Health St. Francis Heart Center should be positive for patients who would otherwise have to go to the hospital for their routine treatments.

"Any new facilities are helpful as long as a patient can get there," Corina said.