PBMC’s planned Center for Women and Infants gets $250,000 boost from North Fork couple

Peconic Bay Medical Center got a step closer to its goal of opening the Center for Women and Infants next year with a $250,000 gift from North Fork residents Robert and Patricia Friemann, PBMC announced this week.

The Center for Women and Infants, the first of its kind in the local area, will feature brand-new private rooms and make much-needed comprehensive women’s health services accessible to residents throughout eastern Suffolk County, according to the press release.  

The center will also enable PBMC to increase its level of care for women at all stages of life, including a more advanced level of breast health, urogynecology and tele-neonatology, with a goal to develop a Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Unit on site. 

“Pattie and I are honored to contribute to the realization of this crucial initiative,” Robert Friemann said in a press release issued by the hospital announcing the donation. 

“I believe in the importance of making high-quality health care for women more accessible throughout our community,” Friemann said. “For too long, my family and my neighbors have been forced to drive long distances for treatment or ignore our health care out of convenience,” he said.

PBMC Executive Director Amy Loeb said today the new Center for Women and Infants is currently being designed for the space formerly occupied by the hospital’s skilled nursing facility, which was shut down in December 2022 to provide space that could be allocated for other growing clinical needs, such as women’s healthcare. Once the hospital completes its design, it will apply to the State Department of Health for a permit called a certificate of need. Construction will begin after approval by the state agency, Loeb said.

Loeb first discussed plans for the new center with RiverheadLOCAL in March 2023, in the context of the hospital taking steps to focus on and improve women’s healthcare in eastern Suffolk. 

At the time, Loeb described the new Center for Women and Infants as a “hospital within a hospital” that will have as its goal caring for women’s health “at every stage of life.”

The hospital had recently completed a full renovation and upgrade of its existing maternity center, which includes private patient rooms that also serve as labor and delivery rooms. It also includes a dedicated operating room for C-sections. The maternity center promotes rooming-in for newborns, but also offers mothers the option of a state of the art newborn nursery, which is staffed by two pediatricians. The newborn nursery also has the equipment and facilities to care for babies that require extra care or special services.

PBMC has expanded its roster of board-certified physicians specializing in obstetrics and gynecology and grown its staff of certified neonatal nurse practitioners, Dr. Scott Berlin, Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at PBMC said in an interview last March.

The donors’ generosity brings PBMC closer to establishing the new center, Loeb said. 

“Rob Friemann has been a driving force for empowering the North Fork community for many years, and we are incredibly grateful to him and his wife Pattie for seeing our vision as a key contributor to community prosperity for current residents and for generations to come,” Loeb said in the hospital press release.

Construction is currently underway on PBMC’s emergency department expansion, which will add 6,600 square feet to the emergency department, increasing the emergency department’s capacity by 75%, and provide a dual-bay trauma unit, additional cardiac response technology, comprehensive radiology capabilities and enhanced efficiency. 

The emergency department expansion, which was approved by the State Department of Health last July, is slated to be completed by the end of this year.  It is one piece of long-term $92 million expansion plan that also includes the Center for Women and Infants and the modernization of the hospital’s south pavilion.

PBMC formally joined the Northwell Health system in 2016. It has since developed the Kanas Regional Heart Center and the Corey Critical Care Pavilion.