Mount Sinai is undertaking a $15 million renovation of the pediatric intensive care unit at its flagship Upper East Side hospital.
The project is the latest in a trend among hospitals to shift to a private patient room model. The plan, which was submitted to the state Department of Health, would relocate half the current ICU at Kravis Children’s Hospital, part of Mount Sinai Hospital, the health system’s flagship 1,134-bed facility on E. 98th St., into private rooms.
The city’s major health systems have moved away from the traditional format of two or more patient beds in a room, divided by a curtain or partition, to single-bed rooms. The addition of or conversion to private rooms is part of a growing portion of construction projects in the churn of health care development in the metropolitan area.
The set-up offers a better patient experience, which is good for business, and helps clinicians manage patient loads and infectious disease. Mount Sinai’s latest project will add to numerous private room expansions across the city and surrounding counties.
Perhaps the biggest is Northwell Health’s bid to build a new 475-bed medical tower as part of Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side, entirely with private rooms. That project must still pass some hurdles before it can proceed, and recently hit a snag when the local community board rejected the plan without certain changes.
The megasystem is also building a $32 million all-private-room maternity ward at Peconic Bay Medical Center, a 144-bed facility in Riverhead. That project, a 22,000-square-foot renovation, would centralize some maternity services and receive patients from a nearby women’s health clinic run by Northwell.
The Mount Sinai project will require renovating the entire sixth floor of the children’s hospital, which will displace offices and administrative spaces currently there, according to a filing with the state. It also means changing mechanical and electrical equipment on the seventh and eighth floors. The project will bring the PICU closer to the operating rooms, connected by a skybridge to the sixth floor of the Annenberg Building next door.
