Elmhurst Hospital gets $3 million boost from QBP
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Queens Borough President Donovan Richards announced $3 million for Elmhurst Hospital as part of his “Borough Hall on Your Block” initiative on Monday, Aug. 21, 2023. Photo via Twitter/Richards
By Ryan Schwach
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards announced on Monday that his office would be sending $3 million in funding to New York City Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst.
The funding, which was announced on the first day of the BP’s “Borough Hall on Your Block” week in Northwest Queens, will aid the hospital in merging 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.
“This $3 million allocation will streamline maternal and neonatal services by relocating them on to the same floor,” Richards said.
“When a NICU, mother, baby, and labor and delivery are all next to each other on the same floor, the patient experience will be stronger and patient outcomes will be brighter, and of course that enables us to have stronger connections with our newborns as well, especially for the family,” he added.
Richards added that the allocation helps improve the connection between families easier, as we come out of the disconnection in medical facilities that COVID brought on.
“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. “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.”
Members of Elmhurst Hospital’s administration thanked the BP for the funding, and also spoke about the improvements it will bring.
“This funding will go so deep into our community,” said Elmhurst CEO Helen Arteaga Landaverde.
The chief of the hospital’s OB-GYN department, Dr. Frederick Friedman, said the funding will do a lot to help the unit’s ability to care for its patients.
“This incredible contribution to our facility will no doubt improve what are the three C's of patient care; comfort for the mother, connectivity between patients, staff or family and also, most importantly, care of the mother-baby unit,” Friedman said.
“I think it sends a tremendous message to not only the community but also to our team members,” he added.
Assemblymember Catalina Cruz also applauded the funding for Elmhurst, her own local hospital.
“As a patient of the women’s unit here, I am very happy to see the investment that you're making,” she said. “I'm very very happy that you're going to have a new location that looks amazing and to be able to bring your patients in there and give them the care that they deserve.”
Elmhurst Hospital leaped onto the national stage in 2020 as it became the epicenter of New York City’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Elmhurst Hospital is home to some of the greatest healthcare heroes that we know,” said Richards. “We saw that before the pandemic and the world got to see the rest of that during the pandemic.”
The pandemic brought with it added precautions and safety measures to healthcare facilities, which while keeping people safe, separated them from their loved ones.
“Those days of destroyed patient experiences are coming to an end,” said Richards.
“We wanted to make sure that we not only talk about improving our communities, but investing in them,” he added.
With Queens being the fastest growing borough, Landaverde said that the funding will go toward supporting the borough’s new realities.
“We started fighting the pandemic together, and now we're taking our community out of the pandemic and we're really reimagining what Queens is like and what it could be,” added Landaverde. “Our borough is the only borough growing by double digit factors. We're growing 14 percent, every other borough is in the one digit.”
“In Queens we're flourishing,” she added. “We're growing and this is where this money really can help because we are part of that growth.”
Richards said the funding is included in the $32 million his office has allocated to Queens’ health care network, and over $10 million of that has gone to Elmhurst alone – one third of the total.
“Let's consider this me putting my money where my mouth is,” he said. “We have to make sure that we continue to build on the foundation.”
Richards also kicked off his last two “Borough Hall on Your Block” events, which were in Southeast and then Western Queens with major financial allocations for local medical facilities.
In September 2022, Richards gave $741,000 to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway which went towards new ICU beds for the peninsula’s hospital, and a week before that he gave an additional $6.8 million for new tech at both St. John’s and Jamaica Hospitals.
In his most recent event in February of this year, Richards’ allocated $1.5 million to Mount Sinai-Queens to construct a brand new 22-bed ICU for the hospital.
“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 in February. “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.”
That project was projected to cost $25 million, and also received a $2 million donation from the Queens members of the City Council.
“The new ICU here will help Mount Sinai Queens go a long way toward accomplishing that goal,” he added.
Queens Borough President Richards was joined by members of Elmhurst Hospital’s staff as well as Assemblymember Catalina Cruz during a funding announcement for the hospital’s maternity units. Photo via Twitter/Richards
Richards’ “Borough Hall on Your Block” will feature events around Northwest Queens through Saturday.
On Monday Richards’ office held a self defense training workshop in Jackson Heights, and on Tuesday there will be a jobs recruitment fair from 2:30 to 6 p.m. at the Elmhurst branch of the Queens Public Library.
