Mount Sinai South Nassau Opens New, Expanded Fennessy Family Emergency Department

$50 Million Renovation Designed to Reduce Wait Times and Improve Patient Experience; includes 54 private exam rooms

Mount Sinai South Nassau, the Long Island flagship of the Mount Sinai Health System, will open its expanded emergency department on March 5, 2025, after a $50 million, five-year renovation that is designed to reduce wait times and improve the patient experience for one of Long Island’s busiest emergency departments.

The opening of the Fennessy Family Emergency Department is part of ongoing capital improvements and expansions at the South Shore campus and is the first phase in the rollout of a newly constructed, four-story Feil Family Pavilion.

With the opening, the Emergency Department’s main entrance for self-transported patients has moved from Washington Avenue to the east side of Oceanside Road, south of Oswald Court. and north of Nassau Parkway. Signs directing traffic to the new Emergency Department entrance have been placed along the main streets leading to and surrounding Mount Sinai South Nassau. The entrance for ambulances remains on Nassau Parkway.  

Named in recognition of Joseph J. Fennessy, a major benefactor and the hospital’s former longtime Board Chair, the modern and expanded Emergency Department doubles its previous footprint and capacity and is the cornerstone of the four-story, 100,000-square-foot Feil Family Pavilion, the rest of which will open in the coming months.  

Funding for most of the construction of the Feil Family Pavilion came from a Federal Emergency Management Agency award that Mount Sinai South Nassau received following superstorm Sandy, as well as from other fundraising initiatives. The $50 million Emergency Department renovation was partially funded by more than $10 million in donations raised during a five-year fundraising drive in the communities served by the hospital. The new Emergency Department features separate areas for pediatric and behavioral health patients.

“With this opening, we are taking emergency medicine on the South Shore to a new level,” said Adhi Sharma, MD, President of Mount Sinai South Nassau and an emergency medicine physician. “Every aspect of this Emergency Department, from the entrance to the waiting area to the reception and triage areas to the patient treatment rooms, has been designed to provide our patients with advanced emergency care and a first-rate experience. From the private exam rooms to a ventilation system that uses outside air, we learned from the pandemic and applied those lessons to the design of this new space.”

“Mount Sinai is committed to advancing and improving health in the communities we serve throughout the region. This effort at our Long Island flagship – to integrate world-class programs and research from the health system combined with an unmatched patient experience provided by a best-in-class workforce – illustrates our continued commitment to advancing health care for our patients and families. Thank you to the Fennessy and Feil families for their support and partnership as we continue our mission in service of our communities,” said Brendan Carr, MD, MA, MS, Chief Executive Officer and the Kenneth L. Davis, MD, Distinguished Chair of Mount Sinai Health System.  

“This is a tremendous milestone for Mount Sinai South Nassau that has been years in the making and will transform how we provide emergency medicine for patients,” said Anthony Cancellieri, Co-Chair of Mount Sinai South Nassau’s Advisory Board. “We have all seen Mount Sinai South Nassau grow from a community hospital to a regional medical center to the flagship hospital on Long Island for the Mount Sinai Health System.”

The Fennessy Family Emergency Department is the size of a football field and has the capacity to see approximately 75,000 patients annually. The Emergency Department features centralized nursing stations for direct oversight of patient rooms, bedside triage, and a trauma unit with an adjoining radiology bay. Designated a Level II Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons, the Fennessy Family Emergency Department’s new trauma suite, which opened in 2023, includes three spacious care bays to facilitate the flow of trauma team members as they care for patients with life-threatening injuries. Each trauma bay is equipped with advanced medical technologies, including imaging systems that provide unobstructed viewing for intubations, difficult and emergent airway management, and bronchoscopy procedures. The suite can surge to six treatment areas in the event of a mass casualty event.

When construction is completed, the Feil Family Pavilion will include 40 new intensive and critical care beds and nine new, modernized operating suites designed for the most complex surgical cases. The pavilion’s expanded Intensive and Critical Care units, which double the current footprint, will allow Mount Sinai South Nassau to meet the region’s rising need for critical care services, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The operating room and its surgical suites will be configured and designed to accommodate nonstop advances in surgical technologies and equipment. The combined impact of the redesigned and larger operating room will allow Mount Sinai South Nassau and its staff of surgeons to increase its surgical scheduling capacity to accommodate projected volumes in same-day, elective, and emergency surgeries.

About Mount Sinai South Nassau
The Long Island flagship hospital of the Mount Sinai Health System, Mount Sinai South Nassau is designated a Magnet® hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) for outstanding nursing care. Mount Sinai South Nassau is one of the region’s largest hospitals, with 455 beds, more than 900 physicians, and 3,600 employees. Located in Oceanside, New York, the hospital is an acute-care, not-for-profit teaching hospital that provides state-of-the-art care in cardiac, oncologic, orthopedic, bariatric, neurology, pain management, mental health, and emergency services and operates the only Trauma Center on the South Shore of Nassau County, along with Long Island’s only free-standing Emergency Department in Long Beach.

In addition to its extensive outpatient specialty centers, Mount Sinai South Nassau provides emergency and elective angioplasty, and offers Novalis Tx™ and Gamma Knife® radiosurgery technologies. Mount Sinai South Nassau operates the only Trauma Center on the South Shore of Nassau County verified by the American College of Surgeons as well as Long Island’s only free-standing, 9-1-1 receiving Emergency Department in Long Beach. Mount Sinai South Nassau also is a designated Stroke Center by the New York State Department of Health and Comprehensive Community Cancer Center by the American College of Surgeons; is an accredited center of the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Association and Quality Improvement Program; and an Infectious Diseases Society of America Antimicrobial Stewardship Center of Excellence. For more information, go to www.mountsinai.org/southnassau.