NYU Langone opens surgery, specialty center in Patchogue

After completing its merger with the former Long Island Community Hospital in Patchogue last year, NYU Langone Health has expanded its reach again in the village by opening a 54,000-square-foot ambulatory center.

The new NYU Langone Ambulatory Care Patchogue, at 196  E. Main St., at the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory, will serve as a physician specialist facility that extends surgical operations done at NYU Langone Hospital—Suffolk  into the downtown area. The facility boasts six “state-of-the-art” operating rooms where surgeons from the nearby Patchogue hospital will perform operations, the health system announced Monday.

Manhattan-based NYU Langone has more than 120 outpatient offices on Long Island, according to the health system. In June, the system announced it would spend billions to build Long Island's first new hospital since 1980, in Melville. 

The new Patchogue center is one of six larger ambulatory sites NYU Langone plans to open in the next year, said Dr. Oren Cahlon, chief clinical officer for NYU Langone.

“Our strategy has been to have many offices throughout the community … and to also have these large sites with multi-specialty space, with operating space, where patients can get the highest level of service,” said Cahlon, who also serves as vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy for NYU Langone. 

Services at the facility, which was purchased for $7.2 million, according to county property records, include general surgery, gynecology, hand surgery, orthopedics, plastic surgery, podiatry and urology, NYU Langone said. 

“Many more surgeries can be done in outpatient facilities than they used to,” said Dr. Marc S. Adler, senior vice president and chief of hospital operations at NYU Langone Hospital—Suffolk. “Hospitals are a busy place with a lot of patients competing for those [operating rooms].”

The combination of surgical operations and specialists in the same facility “supports a coordinated and efficient care experience for patients and referring providers,” the health system said in a news release.

In 2021, Burlington relocated its store on Main Street to a smaller location at a former Bob’s Stores space on Sunrise Highway in Patchogue, Newsday reported at the time.

But the large space remained vacant and there was concern it might remain that way, Patchogue Mayor Paul V. Pontieri Jr. said.

“I’ve always believed a community or a village’s downtown is judged by the assets they have. This is a tremendous asset,” Pontieri said. “It’s supporting the downtown. It’s fantastic.”

Pontieri said that he approached NYU Langone about the possibility of using the site.

Now, with the center open, he said it will attract Long Islanders who may not regularly visit Main Street and will serve as an additional economic engine for the town's revitalization efforts.

“Maybe they’ve never been to Patchogue before, maybe they need to have lunch, maybe they need to relax and walk around town,” he said.

Wendy Darwell, president and CEO of the Suburban Hospital Alliance, a regional trade group representing hospitals on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, said expanding through outpatient offices has become the norm in health care. 

“There’s really a push, both from patients and from policy to get care closer to where patients are,” Darwell said. “This is not the days of yore where all health care was driven to that one big box of a hospital.”

While advancements in technology have made surgery in outpatient facilities increasingly common, ambulatory settings also provide a greater degree of certainty that lowers the cost of care for health systems, she said.

“Outpatient centers are more predictable,” she said. “You know what resources are going to be needed at any given time, and you’re able to schedule and operate in a much more efficient way.”