NYC Council allocates $17.5M to improve Elmhurst hospital

The City Council is investing $17.5 million into New York City Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst in Queens, more than three years after the facility was among the first – and hardest – hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, Councilmember Shekar Krishnan said Monday.

The funding will help with critical facility improvements throughout the hospital including $180,000 towards emergency room updates, $4.5 million for the relocation of the neonatal intensive care unit and a $4.5 million MRI suite expansion.

Krishnan was joined by councilmembers Linda Lee, Lynn Schulman and Mercedes Narcisse in front of an audience of hospital staff on Monday. He said investments to healthcare institutions like Elmhurst hospital, which is part of the city’s public hospital system, are key to addressing the inequities that exist in public health.

City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan says the improvements include emergency room updates and the relocation of its neonatal intensive care unit.

“The fact of the matter is we have a lot of work to do to correct what I perceive to be an extraordinary inequity in our healthcare system, where public hospitals like Elmhurst that are our front lines of treatment, defense and service, receive far less in public or private funding than our private institutions do,” Krishnan said. “And so every year when we invest in Elmhurst hospital, this is a way to correct a systemic inequality.”

The hospital will also get a $3 million mother baby lab, $2 million in upgrades to the cardiac catheterization lab and a new $2 million surgical subspecialty suite for the hospital’s hand surgeon, who is one of the only two in Queens.

“That's amazing, to get people back to work using their hands. It's everything from an artist to a day laborer. I think it's super important,” said hospital CEO Helen Arteaga Landaverde. “I think all the projects are important because they change lives. And for me, that's what makes my job.”

Elmhurst serves as one of the city’s 11 hospitals and serves primarily low-income and minority communities in the heart of one of the most diverse immigrant neighborhoods in New York City. The 545-bed facility, the second-oldest municipal hospital in New York City, was one of the hardest hit during the earliest weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The funding will allow the hospital to invest in updated MRI technology.

Dr. Geoffrey Almonte, who works in the Emergency Department at Elmhurst, said the investments in updated MRI technology would go a long way to improve the care the facility can provide its patients.

“X-ray radiography is one of the first steps in the care of every critically injured patient, and being able to get that resource to the bedside in a timely fashion… is an incredible benefit both to the patients and to the training the hospital can provide,” Almonte said.