Mount Sinai expects first Westchester facility patient in October

Mount Sinai Medical Center has completed construction of the first phase of its new Westchester facility and plans to see its first patients in early October.

The four-story, 112,000-square-foot facility is scheduled for a ribbon cutting Sept. 25.

“The Westchester project is wrapped up from a construction perspective,” said Matt Barnard, Mount Sinai’s associate vice president of facility planning and construction. “We have our ribbon cutting on Sept. 25, and our first patient in early October.”

In February, construction was about 75% complete, with a temporary certificate of occupancy targeted for June and an opening planned for the fourth quarter. Mount Sinai received the temporary certificate of occupancy in June, allowing non-construction personnel to begin working inside the building.

Before the facility opens, certifications and testing remain to be completed, including work involving medical equipment and lab and pharmacy accreditations.

“Given the nature of the facility, there are a lot of certifications,” Mr. Barnard said. “There’s a lot of testing of individual, very technical equipment, mostly the lab accreditations for the pharmacy. So we are going through all of the motions of completing that process.”

He said that work has been underway since the temporary certificate of occupancy was issued.

“Our lab folks and our other clinicians that have the long lead work with medical equipment and licensure have been steadily focused on completing those tasks since that time, and we are wrapping all of that up,” Mr. Barnard said.

Mount Sinai is also training employees hired specifically for the Westchester facility ahead of the opening.

The entire first phase is expected to be complete by the Sept. 25 ribbon cutting.

“The significance is that that really celebrates the expanded presence for Mount Sinai in the community,” Mr. Barnard said. “We’ve had facilities for some time in adjacent communities and markets, and this is our flagship Westchester expansion, so we’re incredibly excited about it and that ceremony is simply to celebrate that next chapter in Mount Sinai’s history and the expansion of healthcare to underserved communities within Miami-Dade County.”

The Westchester location will open with 26 emergency bays, which Mr. Barnard said will make it Mount Sinai’s largest freestanding emergency department.

It will also have an MRI, two CT scanners and ultrasound services. The equipment will serve the emergency department but will also be available for outpatient imaging.

“If patients in the community simply need to get an MRI or CT, it doesn’t have to be related to an emergency,” Mr. Barnard said. “They’ll have access where they didn’t before.”

The facility will also open with a dedicated Baker Act receiving unit integrated with Mount Sinai’s Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Behavioral Health services, providing a space specifically for patients in crisis.

Mr. Barnard didn’t provide projected patient volumes for the Westchester facility, saying it was too soon to discuss them.

“I think it’s too early to speak to that,” he said. “I do know that we’ve done a lot of research. This is an area that historically has had a substantial need for additional healthcare services, and we aim to expand that offering to, you know, bring necessary healthcare to the community.”

Mr. Barnard said the 26-bay emergency department will be the second-largest emergency department overall in Mount Sinai’s system.

Hiring is also underway for clinical and administrative positions at the facility. Mr. Barnard didn’t have an employee count available but said the project created construction jobs and is now generating jobs as Mount Sinai staffs the facility.

More development is planned after the October opening. The first phase includes the shell and core of the four-story building and the freestanding emergency department on the ground floor. The three upper floors are designed to eventually be built out as a full-service hospital.

Before that buildout, Mount Sinai plans to construct a parking garage to accommodate the additional patients and employees expected as the campus expands.

“So to be able to accommodate all the added patients and staff that will go into those upper floors, we’re going to build a parking garage as the immediate next phase,” Mr. Barnard said.

The top floor of the garage is planned to have about 40,000 square feet of medical office and procedural space.

Mr. Barnard said one of the more difficult parts of developing the site was figuring out how ambulances, patients, visitors and service vehicles would move around the property without interfering with each other.

“Obviously, the focus has to be on the ease of ambulances getting in and out, and the ease of visitors and patients that are going to the emergency room in a rush,” he said.

The layout also had to account for the future garage and eventual development of the upper floors.

“To create the site logistics around that, and then also be able to plan for the future development of the garage and the development of the upper floors of the hospital, that was a very long front-end design process to ensure that we got it right, and we feel like we’ve really come out with an end product that is going to serve the community in the best possible way,” Mr. Barnard said.

For Mount Sinai, the Westchester location is also a way to bring more healthcare services closer to residents, according to Mr. Barnard.

“I think what the new location means for the community is a commitment from Mount Sinai to provide outstanding healthcare where people live,” he said. “Instead of anybody in the area having to make a long trek to find healthcare services, it is going to be immediately adjacent to them, and that’s a life-saving prospect.”

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