A new brand for a new era: ‘PBMC Health’ announced by Peconic Bay Medical Center

Riverhead’s community hospital is rebranding itself — again.

Peconic Bay Medical Center officials today formally unveiled the hospital’s new moniker: PBMC Health. The concept recognizes that the medical center’s mission is today much more diverse than providing traditional inpatient hospital services.

With a “continuum of care” that encompasses everything from primary care physician practices to ambulatory surgery, palliative care, home care and graduate medical education — in addition to the provision of comprehensive traditional hospital services — PBMC is more than “just” a hospital, it’s an organic network of providers dedicated to improving the health of the community at large, hospital officials said.

The announcement came at a news conference convened in the sun-drenched first-floor atrium of the 20,000 square-foot Kanas Center for Advanced Surgery, which opened in 2009.

“We purposefully chose the word ‘health’ over ‘medicine’ because we’re dedicated to individual and community health,” PBMC president and CEO Andrew Mitchell said. “It’s much, much more than medicine.”

Founded in 1951 as Central Suffolk Hospital, the community hospital that rose in a former farm field on Route 58 was struggling with a poor reputation and balance sheets awash in red ink when Mitchell was hired away from North Shore-LIJ in 2001. Under his leadership, the organization escaped bankruptcy, stabilized its finances and embarked on a mission of growth to serve an area Mitchell characterized today as 500 square miles in size.

In 2004 it established a foundation whose sole purpose is to raise money for the hospital and in 2006 it changed its name to Peconic Bay Medical Center.

Its medical services and physician staff have grown more than 25 percent in the past decade, according to the hospital’s July 11 news release. PBMC is also training new physicians and surgeons, with residency programs for family physicians and surgeons.

Last week, PBMC Health announced it had signed a 10-year-lease on three buildings in a new office complex in Manorville. (See prior story.) The 25,000-square-foot development will house a primary/family care office, an ob/gyn practice, pediatrics and an urgent care center, Mitchell said last week. Currently under construction, the first building is scheduled to open during the first quarter of 2013. The second building, currently in the design phase, will include a center for digestive diseases, urology services and general surgery, according to the hospital president. Plans for the remaining buildings are still in development.

Last week a Mitchell told RiverheadLOCAL the final phase of development in Manorville may include a Harvard University-Joslin Diabetes Care Center among other prevention services, he said. At today’s news conference, he made a commitment for PBMC Health to bring the diabetes program to the East End, where the disease is affecting people in unprecedented numbers, he said.

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