Patient Visits Triple in First Month for South Nassau's Long Beach Emergency Department

Vast Majority of Patients Are Treated and Released Without Leaving the Barrier Island

During its first month of service to the residents of Long Beach and surrounding communities, South Nassau Communities Hospital Emergency Department at Long Beach treated a total of 906 patients for an average of approximately 30 patients a day.

The total number of patients treated is for the time period beginning August 10 at 9AM – when the Emergency Department at Long Beach first opened its doors to restore around-the-clock emergency medical care to the residents of Long Beach and the barrier island – thru September 10.

Of the 906 residents treated at the Long Beach facility, 166 arrived via the 9-1-1 Emergency Medical System. A total of 20 residents were treated, stabilized, discharged and transported via on-site ambulance services to be admitted to South Nassau Communities Hospital for further inpatient medical care. Another four residents were treated, stabilized, discharged and transported via ambulance to South Nassau, but only to receive additional medical care in the hospital’s Oceanside emergency department.

“The patient volume we are seeing initially – during the first month of operation – is encouraging,” said Richard J. Murphy, South Nassau’s President & CEO. “The numbers indicate that the facility has gained quick acceptance among residents, visitors and within the EMS community. We are hopeful this trend will continue.”

South Nassau invested $5 million in the Long Beach site to open an Urgent Care Center in July of 2014 and then put in an additional $8 million in 2015 to upgrade it to a 9-1-1 receiving Emergency Department. As an Urgent Care Center operating 12 hours per day, the facility treated about 10 patients a day. That volume has tripled since the facility reopened Aug. 10 as Long Island’s only free-standing Emergency Department.

The Long Beach Emergency Department has treated a wide range of injuries and illnesses, including critical care of collapsed lungs and two multiple cardiac arrest cases.

The South Nassau Emergency Department at Long Beach is located at 325 E. Bay Drive, adjacent to the Komanoff Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center. The facility is equipped with leading-edge emergency medical technology and features an experienced staff of board-certified emergency medicine physicians as well as registered nurses with advanced training in emergency medicine.

The facility has six private treatment rooms, including an observation unit with three beds where patients can be held for up to 23 hours, a special room for infectious disease cases, a medical laboratory, a triage area, a behavioral treatment area and a decontamination room. It also features a trauma room and advanced medical imaging department that includes an X-ray machine and a 64-slice CT scanner, the only operational CT scanner of any type in Long Beach and on the barrier island. The 6,300-square-foot facility has the capability to surge to meet increases in volume if needed.

Patients treated and stabilized at the Long Beach ED who require hospital admission or advanced levels of treatment are transferred by on-site ambulance service to South Nassau or the appropriate hospital. South Nassau, which services some 900,000 residents of the South Shore, from Queens to Suffolk County, is a Level II trauma center and advanced cardiac center.

South Nassau® Communities Hospital is a recipient of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines®–Target: Stroke Honor Roll-Elite Quality Achievement Award as well as the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Foundation Get With The Guidelines®–Heart Failure Silver-Plus Quality Achievement Award.

Designated a Magnet® hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), South Nassau is one of the region’s largest hospitals, with 455 beds, more than 900 physicians and 3,000 employees. Located in Oceanside, NY, the hospital is an acute-care, not-for-profit teaching hospital that provides state-of-the-art care in cardiac, oncologic, orthopedic, bariatric, pain management, mental health and emergency services. South Nassau is a designated Stroke Center by the New York State Department of Health and Comprehensive Community Cancer Center by the American College of Surgeons and is an accredited center of the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Association and Quality Improvement Program.

In addition, the hospital has been awarded the Joint Commission’s gold seal of approval as a Top Performer on Key Quality Measures, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care; and disease-specific care for hip and joint replacement, wound care and end-stage renal disease. For more information, visit www.southnassau.org.