NYU Langone is retooling some of the space at its flagship hospital in Kips Bay as part of an ongoing shuffle of operating rooms to meet a growing demand for surgery.
The health system filed plans with the state to convert a storage room for anesthesia equipment into a new operating room at Tisch Hospital, a more than 300-bed facility on 34th St. overlooking the East River. The nearly $10 million renovation is needed to help accommodate the significantly higher year-over-year patient volume, which is largely being felt in surgical services, according to a submission to the Department of Health.
The move is the latest attempt by NYU Langone to modernize the OR space of the aging hospital building in recent years. In 2023, the hospital received approval to consolidate two small operating rooms on the same floor into a larger one with more up-to-date machinery. The rooms were original with the building and cramped – under 350 square feet each – limiting the kind of procedures doctors could use them for.
The number of ambulatory surgeries at NYU Langone facilities in Manhattan between December and February jumped by more than 1,000, to 24,000, in 2025 compared to the year before, according to the most recent financial statement. ER visits in Manhattan jumped by close to 3,000, to 34,800, over the same period.
Converting a storage space into a high-tech medical setting is no simple task, hence the high price tag. Hospital administrators projected the cost of the previous OR renovation at $8 million when they filed plans with the state in 2022, records show. To carry out the construction work on that project without jeopardizing the health and safety of patients, the administrators proposed erecting temporary doors and walls to separate the work zone from the ward’s sanitized clinical spaces.
But losing the partition between the small ORs meant a drop in surgical space, something the new project is intended to offset, the filing stated. The hospital has a total of 66 operating rooms, according to its website.
Administrators plan to design the new space to handle new imaging technology that would allow the hospital to offer more specialized and complex surgeries, the filing states. That includes more organ transplants, which have risen in the city and surrounding suburbs in recent years.
