NYU Langone plans to invest $500 million over the next five years at NYU Lutheran in Brooklyn, vastly expanding the hospital's outpatient footprint, said Dr. Andrew Brotman, the system's chief clinical officer.
The hospital will build a $48.4 million outpatient cancer clinic at 5718 Second Ave. to provide chemotherapy and radiation therapy to patients, according to a recently submitted certificate-of-need application, one of several submitted by NYU Lutheran. The clinic will be NYU Langone's fifth regional cancer clinic, joining the health system's other satellite facilities in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island.
With patients requiring cancer treatments multiple times a week, travel to Manhattan for care can be onerous, Brotman said.
"This is a continuation of our strategy to bring the Perlmutter Cancer Center to the community," he said.
NYU Lutheran will purchase a new linear accelerator from Varian Medical Systems to replace its existing machine and will relocate it to the new clinic, to be built in a warehouse the hospital purchased last year. The cancer clinic will include 24 infusion bays for chemotherapy.
Separately, the hospital plans to build a $10.5 million, 16-bed observation unit adjacent to its emergency department with the aim of preventing hospitalizations. As part of that plan, it will relocate its adult medicine and pediatric cardiology clinics from the hospital to an outpatient clinic, at a cost of $22.5 million.
The creation of an observation unit will "decrease inpatient admissions and put people in the proper level of care," Brotman said, adding that NYU Langone's Manhattan campus makes extensive use of an observation unit to curb hospitalizations.
The project will decrease NYU Lutheran's use of boarding—holding patients in the ER after they've been admitted because inpatient beds are unavailable—and will help its affiliated Performing Provider System meet its DSRIP goals, according to a certificate-of-need application.
The total commitment includes the costs of Lutheran's transition in 2016 to the Epic electronic medical-records system and future projects, which have not yet been submitted for certificate-of-need approval, to improve the Brooklyn hospital's federally qualified health center, neonatal intensive care unit and OB/GYN services. The health system also plans to build an ambulatory surgery center. The health system is exploring adding an inpatient tower further down the line.
"We want to make NYU Lutheran the best hospital in Brooklyn, and we believe that it needs to be full-service," Brotman said.
"NYU Langone to spend $500 million expanding Lutheran's Brooklyn presence" originally appeared in Crain's New York Business.
