Mount Sinai South Nassau opens 5 new operating room suites at its Oceanside facility

Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital has opened five new operating room suites at its Oceanside facility this week, part of an expansion that will allow the facility to start offering open heart surgery.

The operating rooms were slated to open in July, but were pushed back due to construction and regulatory delays, according to hospital administrators. Another four operating rooms will open later this year, joining the five on the second floor of the hospital's new $155 million four-story Feil Family Pavilion. The pavilion is part of a $500 million, multiyear campus expansion project nearing completion, involving a new power plant, parking garage and ambulatory site, and a $50 million five-year renovation and expansion of the emergency department.

The new and bigger operating room suites can accommodate larger teams and equipment such as robotic surgical assistants and three-dimensional image-guided surgical systems, allowing the hospital to start offering open-heart surgeries, said Joe Calderone, senior vice president of communications and development for Mount Sinai South Nassau. 

The process to start offering the surgery involved 10 years of planning, Calderone said, noting the procedure at the South Shore hospital will draw on experienced Mount Sinai surgeons from Manhattan. 

Traveling for surgery is "a lot of wear and tear, not only on the patient, but on the families. So, the goal is to provide these advanced services right here on the South Shore," he said. 

The operating rooms are connected to the renovated Fennessy Family Emergency Department, one floor down, by a dedicated elevator for patients who need immediate surgery, according to a news release. The Feil Family Pavilion, besides the nine operating rooms, includes 40 new critical care beds. 

Two of the nine operating suites were built for the hospital's advanced cardiac surgery program. There will also be two hybrid operating rooms for more complex procedures, with the equipment for both diagnostic procedures and surgeries in the same room. The measure is expected to reduce procedure times and improve patient outcomes, according to a news release.

"We want to make sure everything we're doing is cutting edge," said Dr. Josh Kugler, interim president of Mount Sinai South Nassau. 

The older operating suites were not large enough to accommodate more complex procedures in general, he said, and the expansion will allow surgeries of all kind that require "a high level of sophistication and precision."

Physicians at Mount Sinai South Nassau conduct more than 12,000 surgeries per year, the hospital said in a news release, noting that with the added space, the facility will have greater capacity for same-day, elective and emergency surgeries with 23 operating rooms total.

"The most densely populated area of Long Island is on the South Shore," Calderone said. And, when patients "come to us at the hospital, generally speaking, they're older and sicker."

Between 2013 and 2023, the population of seniors 65 and older on Long Island grew 24% to 520,000, Newsday has reported. 

By Brianne Ledda

brianne.ledda@newsday.com@brianne_ledda

Brianne Ledda covers personal finance and affordability for Newsday. She previously covered Southold and Greenport for The Suffolk Times and is a graduate of Stony Brook University.