COBBLE HILL — A freestanding emergency department will remain at Long Island College Hospital under the State University of New York as eleventh-hour negotiations continue.
SUNY was supposed to exit operations at LICH on May 22 but agreed to maintain some medical services at the Cobble Hill hospital for "a couple of days," attorneys for the state said Wednesday afternoon.
The freestanding emergency room will not include an intensive care unit and there will be no ambulance service to the hospital. The emergency department will accept walk-in patients.
Frank Carone, attorney for SUNY, said the state would keep "those services relevant to the [Emergency Department]" but it was not immediately clear what the services would be.
Jim Walden, attorney for the community groups, said they were "a whisper away" from an agreement with the Peebles Corporation, the current front-runner in negotiations to take over LICH.
The agreement would address the long- and short-term healthcare needs of the surrounding neighborhoods, he said.
The court will reconvene at 10 a.m. Thursday morning.
