GRAMERCY — Mount Sinai Health System is in talks to open an obstetrical-care facility in Brooklyn as part of its downsizing of Beth Israel Hospital, according to officials.
The new obstetrical center would accommodate patients from Brooklyn when Mount Sinai shifts its natal-care services to uptown hospitals, said outgoing Beth Israel President Susan Somerville at a community meeting on Thursday.
“We are in active discussions to open an obstetrical center in Brooklyn, where they have capacity for mothers who are coming across the bridges to have their babies in lower Manhattan,” Somerville said. “We would bring the same standards we have at Mount Sinai Hospital to obstetrical care, and we would bring that level of care.”
Mount Sinai is about to launch a four-year downsizing of Beth Israel hospital that involves a restructuring of services and facilities into what would become the "Mount Sinai Downtown Network," which will include a new, significantly smaller Beth Israel hospital and a series of ambulatory facilities and urgent-care centers across Manhattan.
When the current Beth Israel Hospital closes, Mount Sinai will shift OB/GYN services to physician practices and its ambulatory facilities in the new Downtown Network, and expecting mothers will be able to deliver at Mount Sinai West, on the Upper West Side, and Mount Sinai Hospital, on the Upper East Side.
But according to hospital officials, half of the patients giving birth at Beth Israel live in Brooklyn. So providing services there would lessen their travel distance, and would be a backup for lost capacity in the new Downtown Network.
“It’s not just saying how do we move services somewhere, it’s saying how do we move the quality of the program closer to where these women live,” Somerville said.
Somerville declined to comment further about the form the new facility might take, saying talks were too preliminary to go into detail.
But Mount Sinai spokesman Loren Reigelhaupt said it's looking to partner with existing facilities in Brooklyn.
Somerville announced the news at the community forum on Thursday in Baruch College, along with Jeremy Boals, who will be taking the helm of the new Downtown Network.
Although just half of Beth Israel’s 799 inpatient beds are filled on an average day, according to hospital officials, the new network will have just 220 beds, which is still less than half of the beds filled on a given day at Beth Israel.
But according to Somerville and Boals, advances in rehabilitation care and surgical techniques make inpatient hospitalization less necessary than in the past. The emergency room at the new Beth Israel hospital will be able to meet the immediate needs of acutely sick patients coming in with heart attacks and strokes, and the network’s ambulatory facilities will be able to provide for outpatient treatment, according to Somerville.
“This is the healthcare of the future,” Somerville said.
Still, many of the residents who turned out on Thursday questioned how the new network would be able to provide the same level of care.
Many people who spoke expressed concern about the loss of inpatient beds, and one neighbor of the hospital, Stuyvesant Town resident Linda Medoro, said she didn't believe the new network would be able to treat emergencies as well as the old Beth Israel hospital.
“It sounds like we shouldn’t have a heart attack if we live below 23rd Street,” Medoro said.
