NYU Langone opens at 70 Atlantic Avenue, by Brian Abate

NYU Langone celebrated the opening of the Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Ambulatory Care Center at 70 Atlantic Avenue with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Staff also gave a media tour after the ceremony.

Going on the tour in the state-of-the-art facility felt like stepping into year 3000. The facility looks beautiful and while it is certainly never ideal to end up in the emergency room, or in need of medical care, it looks like patients will be in good hands at this medical center.

The facility includes five floors with a variety of services. Radiology is on the cellar floor, the NYU Langone Health-Cobble Hill Emergency Room is on the first floor, multi-specialty physician practices are on the second floor, ambulatory surgery is on the third floor, and the Perlmutter Cancer Center-Cobble Hill and multi-specialty physician practices are on the fourth floor.

The emergency department, which is replacing the one at 83 Amity St. (a temporary location) includes 27 open treatment beds and bays, including two triage rooms and five negative pressure treatment rooms—nearly doubling the capacity of the former location, two overnight hospital beds, dedicated CT and X-ray imaging services, as well as bedside tablets to facilitate patient communication, education, and entertainment.

The facility will have more than 65 providers from a variety of clinical areas including cardiology with comprehensive noninvasive cardiac testing, gastroenterology, neurology, neurosurgery, spine surgery, and much more.

As part of the ceremony, Mayor Adams praised NYU Langone, saying, “They treat each patient as an individual, who countless individuals are counting on to recover. There was a lot of trepidation and fear when the hospital closed many years ago. People thought that we were not going to bring back quality care and services to this community. That has been proven wrong and the question mark has been straightened to an exclamation point. We are bigger and better than ever because of the great team at NYU Langone.”

Speakers from NYU Langone, as well as Adams and Council Member Dan Goldman all emphasized that the facility would serve Brooklynites from neighborhoods including Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and more.

After they spoke I got to see the facility for myself. All of the floors looked high-tech and efficient. The third and fourth floors had nice views and there was an entertainment system that patients at the Perlmutter Cancer can use if they have to receive treatment for extended periods.

There is also valet parking which is very convenient (especially for getting to the emergency room.) I broke my ankle a while ago and had to hobble along a pretty long way to make it to the emergency room which was not a fun experience.

In addition to meeting many helpful media contacts on the tour, I got to meet a lot of the doctors who will be working at the facility including transplant surgeon, Bruce Gelb, and gastroenterologist Fritz François. Having the opportunity to speak to them and learn about what they do helped me understand the human side of medical care.

“One of the most important things I want people from this area to know is our commitment to bringing quality and safe care to Brooklyn,” François said. “We’re anticipating that this ambulatory care center will see over 200,000 patients between the multi-care center and the emergency department. In other words, we are prepared to serve the borough from Greenpoint to Red Hook and everywhere in between.”

It has been a long process since 2014 when Long Island College Hospital (LICH) closed, but Cobble Hill now has a new ambulatory care center that Brooklynites can rely on.

“We are ready and we are very excited to serve the community,” François said.

Brian Abate