Long Island’s last independent hospital inks affiliation agreement with NYU Langone

NYU Langone and Long Island Community Hospital in East Patchogue have signed an affiliation agreement, NYU Langone announced this week.

The hospitals are now seeking regulatory approval, with the goal of implementing the affiliation at the end of 2021, NYU Langone said in a press release.

Once implemented, the affiliation will further extend NYU Langone’s healthcare network into eastern Long Island, and make available the resources, technologies and capabilities of a world-class academic medical center to the more than 400,000 people served by Long Island Community Hospital.

“We have been working closely with LI Community Hospital over the last several months to assess whether a partnership between our institutions would benefit each of our organizations, the Long Island community, and the patients and families who turn to us for help,” NYU Langone Health Dean and CEO Robert Grossman MD said.

“Today’s agreement publicly confirms our confidence that an affiliation will allow both of our institutions to collaborate and share best practices to better meet the healthcare needs of the communities we serve,” Grossman said.

LI Community Hospital, formerly Brookhaven Hospital Medical Center, is the last independent community hospital on Long Island.

There have been numerous hospital consolidations and closures in the years following the issuance of the December 2006 final report by the Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, a state commission established to assess and improve hospitals and health care in New York.

The commission, better known as the Berger Commission, made recommendations for consolidation and restructuring of clinical services which it said would better serve local communities and strengthen the various community hospitals. The Berger Commission recommended the three East End hospitals — Peconic Bay Medical Center, Eastern Long Island Hospital and Southampton Hospital — join together under a single governance structure affiliated with Stony Brook University Hospital and that Brookhaven Memorial Hospital (now L.I. Community Hospital) explore becoming part of the new entity. PBMC became part of the Northwell Health system in 2015, while Southampton Hospital and then Eastern Long Island Hospital subsequently became affiliated with Stony Brook.

L.I. Community Hospital president and CEO Richard Margulis said his hospital and NYU Langone “share compatible cultures which value the highest standard in medical excellence.” He said LICH is confident the relationship will allow the hospital to continue to expand its services to meet the needs of the community “more effectively meet the challenges of the ever changing healthcare marketplace.”

NYU Langone currently has six hospitals in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Mineola. It also has more than 350 ambulatory sites throughout the region, and more than 150 practices in Queens and Long Island.

NYU Langone, when it completes the affiliation with L.I. Community, which Is pending State Health Department approvals, will become the fourth health system to operate hospitals in Suffolk County, joining Northwell Health, Catholic Health and Stony Brook Health.