Stand-Alone Emergency Room Set To Open At Former St. Vincent's Hospital Site
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The former St. Vincent's Hospital site in New York City's West Village is slated to open as a stand-alone emergency room and medical care center.
Dr. Eric Cruzen, the emergency medicine director of the new Lenox Hill HealthPlex, said the goal is for all patients to be seen within 15 minutes.
"It was never our intention to build a hospital," Cruzen told WCBS 880's Marla Diamond. "It was our intention to return the critical services, the most important services, that were lost when St. Vincent's closed."
Stand-Alone Emergency Room Set To Open At Former St. Vincent's Hospital Site
The ER is housed within the unusual six-story, ship-like building on Seventh Avenue between West 12th and West 13th streets.
"The whole outside of the building has been restored to its original luster," Executive Director Alex Hellinger told Diamond. "The inside has pretty much been taken down to the concrete."
The 24/7 facility is scheduled to open in the coming days. It includes two critical-care rooms and a lab where the 60 most common tests can be performed.
It will be able to treat everything from broken bones to a heart attack. But if a patient requires surgery, he or she will be transferred to a full-service hospital, Diamond reported.
St. Vincent's was shuttered four years ago. Since then, area residents have had to travel across town to Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Bellevue Hospital Center or NYU Langone or uptown to Mount Sinai Roosevelt.
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