Dan's Papers - October 12, 2007 - Molding Southampton Hospital, 1 Step At A Time

Southampton Hospital is rising like a Phoenix from the financial problems that plagued it in the late 1990s. And what this hospital will become and how it will conduct its affairs is finally becoming apparent.

Southampton will be smaller, leaner, more high-tech and more coordinated with three other hospitals in the area - Peconic Bay (formerly Central Suffolk), Brookhaven and Eastern Suffolk out in Greenport. The result will be that state of the art facilities in different fields will be available in at least one of the four centers. And the two smaller hospitals, Eastern Suffolk and Greenport, will have more beds, while the two larger ones, Southampton and Peconic, will downsize. In other words, no matter where you are, you will always be within 45 minutes of high- tech medicine. And all of the hospitals will be associated with the large Stony Brook Hospital, just an hour and fifteen minutes away where the most intricate, complex and specialized diagnostic and treatment facilities are available.

For Southampton, this new world of high-tech medicine has already begun. Last year, largely through the private fundraising efforts of a variety of people and organizations, including Ellen's Run, Susan Roden, the South Fork Breast Health Coalition and Dr. Peter Michelos who heads an organization called Hampton Health Society, a wide variety of new equipment has been purchased for Southampton Hospital, much of it for the emergency room. There is now a dedicated x-ray unit in the emergency room. In a crisis situation, it will no longer be necessary for patients to be taken to another part of the hospital for x-rays. Also purchased for the emergency room are digital film monitors so that film can be read right on the spot. And the emergency room will shortly be expanded into an adjacent part of the hospital so that there will be a fully equipped trauma room ready for immediate treatment.

There is also now a video endoscope immediately available in the emergency room, a device that has already saved several lives.

Elsewhere in the hospital, there is now a new high-resolution MRI machine of the highest quality. And there is a world-class radiologist, Dr. Mary Whalen, formerly an Associate Professor at Columbia, now on board to run the Department of Radiology. There are brand new and improved beds in the Intensive Care Unit, and there are emergency defibrillators on the walls where there were none before.

Outside the hospital, the Hampton Health Society has purchased emergency defibrillators to be placed in strategic locations around the community. There are also new blanket warmers in the ambulances and an all new emergency patrol and rescue beach vehicle.

As the association with the three other local hospitals and Stony Brook proceeds in a coordinated fashion, Southampton Hospital has also begun to organize the Kathleen T. Allen Maternity Center and a new Women's Health Center.

And now Dr. Edna Kapenhas-Valdes, a specialist in Breast Surgery trained at New York Hospital and St. Luke's-Roosevelt and until now as an attending surgeon at Beth Israel, has been hired as a full time breast surgeon here in Southampton. She will have digital mammography imaging equipment at her disposal in Southampton, which will reduce the time between diagnosis and treatment from several weeks to as little as one day. There is also a new probe called a Mammatone, which is a device used for biopsies. And there is a new ultrasound machine. Dr. Edna Kapenhas-Valdes can perform a biopsy on site and get a diagnosis of a suspicious lump within hours. After that, if necessary, a treatment plan can be promptly arranged.

There is also new digital mammography imaging equipment in the East Hampton satellite hospital now, so images can be transmitted directly to Southampton and read on the spot by Chief of Radiology Dr. William Brancaccio in consultation with Dr. Kapenhas-Valdes.

Meanwhile, through the determined efforts of State Senator Ken LaValle, State Assemblyman Fred Thiele and Southampton Hospital CEO Robert Chaloner among others, the tens of millions of dollars pledged by New York State's Berger Commission to improve health in the area have been released to the four regional East End hospitals. Southampton Hospital has received $8 million, Peconic Bay $5 million, Eastern Suffolk $600,000 and Brookhaven $9 million.

The money is now being used to create the different centers of different specialties in the four hospitals. In Southampton it's the Women's Health Center. The entire project should be completed before another year and a half goes by.