It was a three-year operation.
NYU Langone Health has completed a meticulous merge with a Long Island hospital to become a high-tech care facility with expanded services — including robotic procedures.
Patchogue’s Long Island Community Hospital — which has been affiliated with the New York City-based healthcare system since 2022 — has been officially rebranded as NYU Langone Hospital — Suffolk.
“We were able to really bring the recipe for success that we’ve seen on the other campuses within NYU, out to Suffolk County,” Dr. Marc Adler, senior vice president and chief of hospital operations, told The Post ahead of the announcement.
But the real change, beyond the new name, comes through enhanced efficiency and a wider range of services and procedures offered to patients, the doctor said.
“When you come into the emergency room, the wait time has significantly dropped” since NYU became affiliated with the South Shore institution three years ago, Adler said.
“We’re now, on average, about eight minutes from the time you come until you see your provider. That’s a substantial improvement.”
Adler also noted a 25% drop in infection rates since NYU’s involvement and boasted an expanded “continuity of care” for those being treated, as well as a expansion of providers in services that were previously outsourced.
“We’ve been able to expand the reach for our outpatient services to patients that are also connected to the hospital,” Adler noted.
The newly named facility, which has 11 operating rooms, has also broadened its cancer services — with some help from new aged technology.
“We have passed over 1,500 new robotic procedures,” Adler said. “Three years ago, we didn’t have any robots in the hospital.”
In terms of doctor-guided cancer operations, he explained that “the robot helps get the instrument into a much smaller space with a smaller incision.”
For patients, it means “less bleeding, less risk of infection, a much shorter healing time.”
“It can even mean many patients go home that day from the hospital,” the doctor said.
He added that the new medical robotics have also become “bread and butter” for surgeries involving hernias, the gallbladder and urology.
Adler said he and his team are also excited to recruit local doctors and other healthcare workers to join the expanding medical forces in Patchogue.
He is also enthusiastic about collaborating with nearby high school and college students for programs.
“I think the community has been overwhelmingly supportive of this,” Adler said of the merge. “Certainly, the employees and staff at the hospital are essentially over the moon that this is happening.”
The operations boss said that he has been most impressed with the “steep trajectory” of improvement since the systems united in 2022.
“It was a hospital that had a lot of opportunity…we knew it could become something great,” the doctor said.
“It just needed an investment in resources and expertise.”
