Stony Brook Hospital’s East Hampton Emergency Room Completed

Construction of the Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department, a 22,000-square-foot facility on Pantigo Place in East Hampton, has been completed, and it is expected to open in spring 2025.

The freestanding Emergency Department and imaging and diagnostic center, part of the Stony Brook Medicine health care system, will operate 24 hours per day, seven days per week, and is designed to provide expert emergency care closer to home for residents of East Hampton Town.

Tours of the new Emergency Department were offered to local media last week. Features include a dedicated resuscitation room; cardiac monitoring capabilities in every exam room; specialized fast-track treatment rooms for general, pediatric, obstetrics/gynecology and ophthalmology patients; two isolation rooms; comprehensive imaging services, including MRI, CT, ultrasound and X-ray; an on-site ambulance for hospital transport; and environmentally friendly elements, including rooftop solar panels, a rain-catch garden and native plantings.

Parts of the main Stony Brook Southampton Hospital building in Southampton Village are more than 80 years old. A new facility on the State University’s Stony Brook Southampton campus, farther to the west, is planned.

While a date for that move has not been determined, it would put residents of East Hampton’s hamlets an even greater distance away, adding to the hazards of experiencing a health emergency on the South Fork, particularly during the summer.

In 2019, the East Hampton Town Board unanimously agreed, after a 2018 public hearing and at the urging of officials, including the mayor of East Hampton Village, the chief of the Montauk Fire Department and the chairman of the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation, to enter into a 50-year lease agreement, with optional extensions totaling an additional 49 years, with the Southampton Hospital Association for the parcel at 400 Pantigo Place, near existing medical facilities and offices. The facility displaced two playing fields, which were relocated on Stephen Hand’s Path.

“We’ve been able to raise over $30 million from the community,” said Julia McCormack, the Southampton Hospital Foundation’s president, “along with a $10 million grant that came from the state. And we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from our neighbors. But, also, there have been a host of other organizations that have joined with us to make sure that we are successful.”

“It’s been an unbelievable partnership,” added Emily Mastaler, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s chief administration officer. “We’ve had the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation supporting us, the Southampton Hospital Association, the Southampton Hospital Foundation, and then myriad other community supporters and members that have really come together.”

“That partnership is really very important,” said William Wertheim, an executive vice president of Stony Brook Medicine. “For us in Stony Brook Medicine, we’re looking to see what the health needs of the communities are all across Suffolk County. This is really the paradigm for how to do this successfully.

“I think this community has needed emergency services for a long time, and we were very excited, very proud, to partner with the community and all the groups here to create this building.”

The Emergency Department is characterized by ample space, high ceilings and natural light. “The space is really designed to create a comforting vibe,” Mastaler said. “There was a lot of intentionality in how it was built to be able to promote that sense of well-being.”

The ambulance entrance is at the rear of the building. “They can bring a patient directly into the Emergency Department, so they have direct access,” Mastaler said. “And, from that, they can go straight into whatever room they’re assigned.”

“The focus is to provide state-of-the-art care,” said Carol Gomes, Stony Brook University Hospital’s CEO and chief operating officer. “All of the new equipment that we have truly is state-of-the-art, and we’re looking forward to providing that for a community that really deserves the best care possible.”

A spring 2025 opening is the goal, Mastaler said. “That will depend on finalizing our certifications and our licensure with the [State] Department of Health, which is moving along. We’re seeing that progress nicely, but there are a series of steps that have to be maintained to achieve that.”

There has been much discussion in the town regarding staffing the new facility, given the acute shortage and affordability of housing in the town. That, too, is moving forward, Mastaler said.

“We are seeing interest in joining this particular effort. … We have interest from folks who are existing at Southampton Hospital to potentially share and come to support this effort. We have physicians who want to come out here to practice who are potentially going to be moving throughout all of our emergency departments — which I love, because that will build continuity within our emergency service delivery system.”

Recruitment started last summer, she said, “and we plan to onboard those folks through a training model and practice sessions and drills here to make sure that that team is becoming comfortable with this facility.”

“Housing is critical,” Dr. Wertheim agreed. Earlier this year, he met with the East End supervisors and mayors “to talk about the importance of considering workforce housing for health care workers, and in particular to see if they were able to think about using the Community Housing Fund that they have available to them to help offset the cost for really critical workers.”