East Hampton Satellite Emergency Room Construction Finally Underway

Construction on the new Stony Brook Southampton Hospital satellite emergency department in East Hampton is underway, and the facility is now expected to be up and running by late 2024 — about a year later than the hospital had originally hoped.

When it opens, the 22,000-square-foot facility on Pantigo Road will host a variety of medical services that the Emergency Department at the hospital provides, allowing those in need of urgent care to be treated quicker and then transported to the hospital for more advanced care if needed, or perhaps saving many the trip west altogether.

There will be trauma rooms and X-ray and MRI facilities, triage, examination, and fast-track rooms for treating patients with problems that can be addressed quickly so as to cut down on longer wait times for other patients.

The facility will cut the amount of time an ambulance from Montauk can get a patient into a doctor’s care in half and will save those from Springs and Amagansett more than 30 minutes of travel time even in the low seasons.

Montauk Fire Department ambulances are frequently out of the district for as long as three hours for each patient that has to be transported to the hospital in Southampton. With the hospital planning a future move even farther west, to the Stony Brook Southampton college campus, travel times will be even longer.

The plans for the $40 million facility were unveiled in 2017. The Pantigo Road property was chosen because of its central location in the town and proximity to other medical offices and the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation. East Hampton Town leased the property to the Southampton Hospital Association, the nonprofit arm of the hospital that has raised the funds for the project, including a $10 million grant from New York State, and is overseeing the construction. The structure is being built by Turner Construction.

“For over a century, Southampton Hospital Association has been dedicated to building the future of health care on the South Fork. We are proud that work on the future Stony Brook Medicine East Hampton Satellite Emergency Department, a 22,000 square foot, state-of-the-art facility at 400 Pantigo Place, is well underway with completion targeted for late 2024,” the association said in a statement. “This satellite emergency facility will ensure all those living farthest east have access to emergency care and health services.”

The project is about one year behind schedule from SBSH’s original plans, largely due to backlogs in Suffolk County Department of Health permitting and logistical complications. East Hampton Town and the hospital had held a ceremonial groundbreaking in the summer of 2022, but actual site work did not begin until last month.