Mount Sinai Queens brings in cash to build new ICU
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Queens Borough President Donovan Richards visited Mount Sinai Queens on Friday to announce $3.5 million in funding to help the hospital build a new 22-bed intensive care unit. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Mount Sinai Queens took a step toward revamping its intensive care unit from eight to nearly two dozen beds after getting a major cash infusion from Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and the Queens delegation of the City Council.
On Friday, Richards presented hospital leaders with a $1.5 million donation from his office’s capital budget, which will be used to create Mount Sinai Queens’ 22-bed ICU. The borough president’s donation comes on top of a $2 million donation from the Queens members of the City Council.
In total, the donation represents about 15 percent of the projected total cost of the new unit, which hospital leaders and officials said became a glaring need in the wake of the pandemic.
“The need for this funding and this project became clear during COVID-19 – like many other hospitals, the pandemic quickly led to the ICU being overwhelmed with patients,” Richards said from the hospital on Friday. “Those dark days showed us that we need Mount Sinai Queens, and all of our hospitals, to be in a better position to handle an influx of critically ill patients.”
“The new ICU here will help Mount Sinai Queens go a long way toward accomplishing that goal,” he added.
The hospital’s current eight-bed ICU can fill up quickly, officials said on Friday. When it does, patients are often sent to another unit in the hospital not properly staffed or equipped for intensive care or sent to hospitals in Manhattan.
Director of Critical Care at Mount Sinai Queens Dr. Nazia Mashriqi said that the new beds will likely eliminate the need for such transfers.
“Because of our strong reputation, we get a lot of critically ill patients,” Mashriqi said. “Sometimes we have to take care of these patients in our intermediate care unit and other times we have to transfer them to Manhattan.”
“By expanding our ICU, we can increase our capacity to improve health care and this is very important for the borough and the people of our community in Queens,” she added.
Dr. Cameron Hernandez, the hospital’s executive director, said the new unit is part of the hospital’s overall attempt to up the healthcare facility’s capacity.
“Over the last few years, we've been able to do more and more complex procedures and surgeries here to make Mount Sinai Queens a destination and not a pitstop to Manhattan,” Hernandez said.
The new ICU is projected to cost $25 million. In addition to the $3.5 million it received on Friday, the hospital has also put $15 million of its own funds into the project. It’s currently campaigning to raise an additional $6.5 million in donations.
