Northwell Health will continue to harden its footprint on eastern Long Island with plans to build a new maternity center at its flagship Suffolk County hospital.
The megasystem plans to expand the maternity unit at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, part of an effort to centralize a growing maternity program. The $32 million project would combine the 144-bed facility’s maternity nursing unit and C-section suites into a new space on the first floor of the building, according to a filing with the state Department of Health.
Northwell Health, based in New Hyde Park in Nassau County, has been voraciously expanding for decades throughout the city, Westchester and the Hudson Valley to become the biggest health system in the region. Over the last 10 to 15 years, the system has expanded its reach across the eastern end of Long Island by buying hospitals and creating hubs populated by specialists from its spread of physician practices.
The system acquired Peconic Bay Medical Center in 2016, the same year it changed its name from North Shore-LIJ Health System, to serve as the anchor of its growing presence east. Since then, Northwell, which brought in $17 billion in revenue in 2023, has poured millions into the hospital. One of the biggest recent infusions was a $92 million project to add a 6,600 square foot emergency department and a women and infants’ center, which was announced in 2023.
The latest project entails a 22,000-square-foot renovation in the existing building that will take approximately 2 years to complete, according to the filing. The new center, which will offer all private rooms, is intended to function as a complement to a women’s health clinic opening a short distance away in Mannerville, where patients can be admitted for deliveries or surgery, said Peconic Bay CEO Amy Loeb. Together, they will fill a niche for maternal services in the area.
“Before, women either had to travel or choose not to access that type of care,” Loeb said.
The project will move the facility’s existing C-section suite from the 3rd floor, which the filing described as “undersized by today’s standards,” and will be left vacant. C-sections have risen dramatically in recent decades, sparking criticism that some of the procedures are being done unnecessarily. Peconic Bay has seen C-section rates increase following national trends, Loeb said. Hospital leaders expect the number of C–sections to continue to go up as deliveries rise overall, but are committed to bringing down the proportion of babies born that way in line with clinical guidelines, she said.
