BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Here’s looking at you, kid. Make that looking inside you.
Featuring state-of-the-art CAT scans, M.R.I.’s and X-rays, the new $16 million imaging center at Lenox Health Greenwich Village is the latest addition to the growing community healthcare hub at Seventh Ave. and W. 12th St.
A year ago, North Shore-L.I.J. Health System — recently renamed Northwell Health — opened a stand-alone 24/7 emergency department in the bottom of the former St. Vincent’s O’Toole Pavilion.
The new imaging center is on the fifth floor of the ship-shaped building, which was originally built for the National Maritime Union. It represents the second phase of the $150 million renovation of the 160,000-square-foot medical complex, which is anchored by the freestanding E.D., which has no hospital beds attached to it.
The new imaging center will be followed, in 2017, by ambulatory surgery, physicians’ offices and a range of other medical services, as well as community meeting space.
Led by medical director Dr. Kavita Patel, the imaging facility offers high-field M.R.I., low-dose CAT scan, ultrasound, 3D mammography, image-guided biopsy, bone densitometry, X-ray services and procedures.
Assemblymember Deborah Glick and state Senator Brad Hoylman were on hand at the Aug. 2 ribbon-cutting.
“The community really had a terrible blow when we lost St. Vincent’s,” Glick said. “It was a focal point for the community. It employed a lot of people, and the area was dramatically affected when it closed. The new emergency room has been very important to the surrounding community.
“I’m old enough to have had some radiology, and this is a beautiful facility,” she said of the new imaging center.
“It is a beautiful facility, outside and inside. This looks like a living room,” Hoylman concurred. He added that early detection dramatically improves women’s chances of surviving breast cancer. The free mammography van that he sponsors is a very popular service, he noted.
Also attending the official opening event was District Leader Terri Cude, first vice chairperson of Community Board 2.
The imaging center features top-notch equipment. The M.R.I. machine cost $1.4 million — the software alone was another million dollars, the technicians said.
Dr. Jason Naidich, head of Northwell Health’s imaging services and chairperson of its radiology department, said the field basically involves reading the images — so Northwell’s extensive roster of experts will be able to examine these whether they are at L.H.G.V. or — via the Internet — at another facility.
“All of the radiologists at Lenox Hill Hospital can read the images seamlessly,” he noted. “We have a team of more than 170 radiologists.”
Northwell Health is the nation’s 14th largest healthcare system, and the group’s officials say that deep pool of expertise is a major asset for the Greenwich Village health hub.
The imaging center is open seven days a week to 10 p.m., offering convenient nighttime and weekend hours.
In the slightly more than a year it has been open, the stand-alone Village E.D., as of Aug. 2, had seen 33,623 patients. It’s on track for this coming year to see 36,000, said Alex Hellinger, the community healthcare center’s director.
Northwell Health has also opened three local urgent-care centers — on Eighth St., as well as in Gramercy and Chelsea.
“Our goal was to provide a comprehensive medical network in Greenwich Village,” he explained, speaking after the ribbon-cutting.
Asked how he thought the planned Beth Israel Hospital relocation and downsizing would affect the new W. 12th St. emergency department, Hellinger said, “It’s really too early to tell — but we’ll be ready. We were built to have the capacity. Their model is going to be very similar to ours.”
More than 90 percent of the Village E.D.’s patients are treated and released. About 7 percent are transferred to full-service hospitals for higher-level care.
Hellinger noted that, among other things, the free-standing E.D. differs from urgent-care centers since they “accept ambulances and are 911-receiving.”
“We’ve gotten gunshot wounds, head trauma, people who have jumped off buildings,” he said. “Last night, a young guy came in in cardiac arrest — his heart wasn’t beating. We revived him.”
On another note, the director said he was surprised by how many drug-overdose cases they’ve been getting in the tony Village.
“There’s a lot of drugs down here,” he said. “We get K2 a lot — it seems to be one of the drugs of choice of the neighborhood. I didn’t expect to see that around here.”
