Elmhurst Hospital gets $17 million boost from Council
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City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan announced $17.5 million in City Council funding for Elmhurst Hospital this week. Photo by John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
Several years after being at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic, Elmhurst Hospital this week was on the receiving end of a $17.5 million investment from several members of the City Council.
The funding, which was earmarked for the hospital by Queens City Councilmembers Shekar Krishnan, Linda Lee, Lynn Schulman, Speaker Adrienne Adams, the Queens Delegation and Brooklyn Councilmember Mercedes Narcisse, will go toward a number of projects aimed at improving the hospital’s facilities and increasing its ability to serve Western Queens residents.
The $17.5 million in funding will be used to pay for six projects.
Receiving a plurality of the funds is an effort to relocate the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit – $5.8 million of the funds will go toward that project.
The hospital will also use $4.5 million of the funding to expand its MRI suite, $3 million to create a mother baby lab, $2 million for upgrades to its cardiac catheterization lab, $2 million for a new surgical specialty suite and $180,000 for upgrades to the hospital’s pediatric adult emergency room.
The funding boost is needed, lawmakers and hospital officials said on Monday.
Elmhurst Hospital, which operates under the New York City Health + Hospitals System, is the second-oldest municipal hospital in the five boroughs. The majority of the patients it serves are low-income residents of Northwest Queens, which includes some of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city and country.
Elmhurst Hospital was also thrust onto the national stage during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dubbed the epicenter of the epicenter of the pandemic, Elmhurst Hospital saw lines of patients form daily outside its doors for weeks hoping to be tested or treated. For some time during the first year of the pandemic, the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital also saw a disproportionate number of COVID cases and deaths.
“Elmhurst Hospital is the beating heart of Western Queens,” Krishnan, who represents parts of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, said. “It cares for us when we need it the most, and saw us through the worst of the pandemic.”
“As we recover and rebuild more equitably, this $17.5 million in NYC Council funding is part of how we provide all New Yorkers the quality healthcare we deserve,” he added.
Krishnan said that the funding was part of a larger effort to make the city’s healthcare system more equitable.
“This is a way to correct systemic inequality,” the councilmember said. “Because we know that our health, the health of our communities, is connected to everything else around us.”
In the name of bringing more equity to the area, the subspeciality surgical suite to be built with the funding will be dedicated to hand surgery. The hospital’s hand surgeon is only one of two practicing in Queens.
“There are only two hand surgeons in all of Queens that are caring for our residents, and only one full time one here at Elmhurst, who has never had a hand surgery clinic before but who takes care of all of our immigrant workers – whether it construction day laborers or otherwise who depend on the health of their hands and their well being to provide for their families and to pay their rent every single day,” Krishnan said.
“This hand surgery clinic is an investment not only in Elmhurst, but in our immigrant communities,” he added.
Elmhurst Hospital received $17.5 million in funding from the City Council this week. Photo by John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
Lee, who serves as the chair of the Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities and Diseases, said that as much as the funding is about aiding the communities that use the facility, it’s about aiding the people who work there.
“This funding of $17.5 million is just a drop in the bucket of the gratitude that we have for all that you do and continue to do for our city,” Lee said.
Dr. Helen Arteaga-Landaverde, the CEO of Elmhurst Hospital, said that she was excited that the funding would go toward a number of different hospital functions, helping patients of all types.
“The funding the council has allocated to renovate our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, our mother-baby unit and cardiac catheterization lab, as well as enhance our MRI and surgical subspecialties suites and provide an additional portable x-ray machine in our busy emergency department will greatly enhance our ability to care for our patients and expand services in our growing community,” she said.
The funding announced this week is only the latest in a series of cash infusions into the hospital.
In August, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards’ office sent $3 million in funding to the hospital. The funding is to be used to help the hospital merge its maternal and neonatal departments, consolidating the two units onto a single floor for improved care for patients and higher efficiency for doctors and nurses.
“When you have different services on one floor, unlike what we see today, where people want different floors, service delivery is not as efficient as it possibly can be,” Richards said in August. “It's also about comfort and connection, and I know how that feels.”
“Every single day, doctors and nurses not only save fives, they bring new life into the world right here at this institution,” he added. “I consider it God's work, especially the work you do in a NICU.”
