Long Beach’s off-campus ER, a LI first, has it all

“It has everything an Emergency Room should,” said South Nassau Communities Hospital (SNCH) spokesperson Nubia Rodriguez. “It is open day and night, has a full staff of doctors and nurses, on-site laboratory facilities, CAT scan and radiology services, plus acute cardiac and stroke treatment.”

Rodriguez was describing the new full-service emergency department in Long Beach at a meeting of the Island Park Civic Association. 

It is Long Island’s first off-campus, hospital-based emergency department. The opening fulfilled a promise, made by SNCH after it acquired the assets of the former Long Beach Medical Center, to re-establish 911 ambulance emergency medical services on the barrier island. 

The Family Medicine Center, at 325 East Bay Drive, is staffed by board certified doctors Cheryl Carrao (family practice) and Bernadette Riley (family and osteopathic manipulative medicine), resident physicians and nurses.

The 6,300-square-foot Long Beach Emergency Department (LBED) features six private treatment rooms, including an observation unit with three beds where patients can be held for up to 23 hours, a special room for infectious disease cases, a medical laboratory, a triage area, a behavioral treatment area, a decontamination room, a trauma room and advanced medical imaging department that includes an X-ray machine and a 64-slice CT scanner, which is the only operational CT scanner of any type on the barrier island.

SNCH also has ambulances stationed at the facility, ready to transport patients to its main campus in Oceanside as the need arises.

Existing state Department of Health protocol requires that all acute strokes, heart attacks and trauma patients transported by the 911 Emergency Medical System bypass the Long Beach ER and be brought to the appropriate state-designated hospital. Patients treated and stabilized at the Emergency Department who require hospital admission or advanced levels of treatment will also be transferred. South Nassau, which services 900,000 residents of the South Shore, from Queens to Suffolk County, is a Level II trauma center and advanced cardiac center.