There are only two hospitals where women on Staten Island can go to have their babies, and one, Staten Island University Hospital, hadn’t upgraded its women and newborn services since 1979. That all changed Wednesday when the hospital unveiled the Gruppuso Family Women and Newborn Center, a more than $200 million endeavor that will allow the hospital to welcome 1,000 more babies annually.
Dr. Brahim Ardolic, SIUH’s executive director, said the Northwell hospital planned to build a new center for more than a decade before the Covid-19 pandemic delayed progress. The 50,000 square-foot facility is built on top of the hospital’s new central utility plant which includes emergency power generators and air handlers. Lifting its power supply above the 50-year floodplain was a goal for the hospital, Ardolic said, since the facility nearly flooded during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The fourth floor of the new building offers 10 rooms for mothers to have their babies, including three Cesarean section operating rooms, before heading downstairs to the 30-room maternity ward.
Now that it’s complete, Ardolic said, one of the center’s goals is to improve the success rate for women giving birth in the borough, which at one point had the second-highest infant mortality rate in the city and continues to see disparities among mothers of color. The center was revealed Tuesday and will begin taking patients in mid-April.
How will the center improve care access?
The reality is when you look at New York City as a whole, there is a needed capacity for delivery of babies. While the birth rates have started to lightly decline, what you don’t have a lot of in the city are modern spaces for the modern ways of approaching the child-birthing process. And specifically to be able to do it in a private space with your significant other, and then not have to pay extra to do that. In a lot of the hospitals in the city, it’s such a premium if you want a private space. Most hospitals will charge you for that. This allows us to have a private space, not just during the birthing process but even afterward, with no additional pay. These are spaces with private bathrooms for all of our patients, regardless of who they are.
How will this center help address infant mortality rates in the borough?
A significant number of Staten Islanders end up leaving Staten Island to have babies, either going to Brooklyn or Manhattan. Our space was built in 1979 and hadn’t been touched. Being able to renovate a space, and to modernize it, and to set it up to be able to take care of critically ill women when needed…and to have the additional OR space, the additional pre- and post-op [space]…We believe this sets our staff up to be able to better care for these women. We already have a very low C-section rate and a very low maternal mortality and morbidity rate. With that said there’s always an opportunity for us to move forward and continue to do a better job in our community.
We should be able to deliver between 4,000-4,200 babies [per year]. It will give people the ability to stay in their own community.
How many people will staff the center?
This new center will be open all year round, 24 hours per day. Over 200 staff members will help care for expectant mothers as well as mothers and babies postpartum.
What’s next for SIUH maternity care?
We are building an adjoining neonatal intensive care unit that will be opened in 2025, which will be the last step in this process. [It will be] in the original building but directly attached to where this building is, and will allow us to actually renovate that space and get it up to modern standards to be able to take care of the sickest and littlest babies.
How will the new NICU strive to improve access?
This state-of-the-art center will allow us to care for all critically ill neonates in a modern setting with the newest equipment. The new unit will [also] allow us to care for the additional babies that will be born as the [mother and newborn center’s] capacity increases by 1,000 deliveries.
Jacqueline Neber , 2024-03-08 10:33:05
Source link
