Mount Sinai South Nassau

Mount Sinai South Nassau continues to serve community, breaks new ground

By Mike Smollins

When faced with an “unprecedented” situation in April 2020 as coronavirus numbers reached their peak, 383, the staff at Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital rose to the occasion and banded together to get through the difficult time. Now, staff is gearing up to continue the fight against the Delta variant.

While many lives were lost to the coronavirus, the hospital celebrated the release of hundreds of Covid-19 positive patients who were released with a clean bill of health. At a time when front-line workers were stretched thin, the Oceanside community and many others came together to show their support, donating food to the hospital’s staff daily throughout the pandemic.

With Covid-19 cases back on the rise and new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance announced on July 27, local hospitals are in full preparation mode. Dr. Adhi Sharma, chief medical officer at MSSN, recently discussed how people can protect themselves and their loved ones from the variant.

Sharma said that Mount Sinai has seen an increase over the last week in their Covid patient census. Where the hospital saw one to two cases a day in June, they saw eight between July 29 and 30. Those new cases among patients have universally been seen in unvaccinated individuals.

“The challenge with Delta is that it is extremely transmissible,” Sharma said. “Even vaccinated individuals are getting Delta and we are seeing that in our staff.” Sharma added that most of the cases the hospital has seen has come from travel.

“We came out of the box, and we may have to go back in the box for a little bit,” he said. “That’s going to be challenging and I think we are going to see a lot of Covid cases as a result of that.”

Before, during and after the surge of the pandemic, MSSN was committed to delivering standardsetting, patient-centered health care. It is one of the region’s largest hospitals, with 455 beds, more than 900 physicians and 3,000 employees.

The hospital is an acute-care, not-for-profit teaching hospital that provides state-of-the-art care in cardiac, cancer, orthopedic, bariatric, pain management, mental health and emergency services. It is a designated Stroke Center, boasts Long Island’s first and only Gamma Knife® and Novalis Tx™ radiosurgery technologies for superior cancer care, expert orthopedic services, and emergency and elective angioplasty. MSSN has been designated as an Accredited Bariatric Surgery Center by MBSAQIP and is also a recipient of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s “Get With The Guidelines®”-Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award with Target: StrokeSM Honor Roll Elite.

MSSN’s beautiful North Addition houses two 36bed medical surgical units, a 36-bed inpatient behavioral health unit and comprehensive maternity services center with 26 private postpartum rooms, spacious labor and delivery rooms and a neonatal intensive care unit.

The hospital’s Emergency Services department is one of the largest and most advanced on Nassau County’s South Shore. Designated a regional stroke center and Level II Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons, the department houses 35 treatment rooms and specialty care, including a high-speed CT-scan and x-ray facility, pediatric emergency room and psychiatric emergency room.

MSSN is the only hospital on Nassau’s South Shore permitted to perform angioplasty in an emergency or an elective basis. In the event you or a loved one need angioplasty, it can be performed on the spot at the hospital’s Center for Cardiovascular Health, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And services are expanding, as on June 22, MSSN celebrated the groundbreaking for its J-Wing on its Oceanside campus. The wing will serve as the cornerstone of hospital’s $400 million capital expansion to increase health-care services. Projected to open in 2023, the $130 million J-Wing will stand at four stories and 100,000 square feet.

The chairman of Mount Sinai’s board of directors, Joe Fennessy, said the board re-evaluated old plans for the facility, updating the infrastructure to match the evolving trends in health care. “We began to reimagine what this hospital should be, and we realized to best serve the needs of our community, we had to be something different,” he said.

For more information about MSSN and its services, call (877) 768-8462 or (516) 632-3000, or go to www.southnassau.org. We encourage you to “like” them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.