Primary care center comes to Long Beach boardwalk

The sight of sunlight shimmering on the waves outside the doctor’s office above Long Beach’s boardwalk can soothe the nerves of patients waiting to get poked and prodded and measured.

“Everyone comments on the view and it’s nice, especially in the evening and the sunset,” Dr. Haran Ratna said Tuesday at the Mount Sinai South Nassau primary care walk-in center. “In the summertime, people are going to come straight off the beach, so it is a selling point.”

Medical-provider officials held an introductory news conference Tuesday at the walk-in center. The facility officially began seeing patients there on Nov. 4, they said, following a $600,000 buildout and equipping of the 2,600-square-foot space inside the Breeze rental and condo complex.

The facility, which moved from West Park Avenue, had begun offering limited services in May, Mount Sinai officials said. It will be open year-round, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with possible modifications offseason.

“With the primary care combined with the walk-in, we should be able to not only continue to provide ongoing primary care for those patients who were seen at the prior location on West Park, but also patients who are new to the area,” said Dr. Adhi Sharma, president of Mount Sinai South Nassau, at the news conference. “And patients who don't have primary care would also be able to walk in and get primary care services.” 

Ratna said the facility is offering medical services for conditions including respiratory infections and urinary tract infections, vaccinations, cancer screenings and the management of chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.

The facility does not offer emergency or urgent care services, and patients may be referred to other medical facilities.

“It's limited to what it can provide in a severe emergency, so that's why we have the emergency department that's just up the road, and those emergencies should go [there],” said Dr. David Neubert, referring to the Mount Sinai emergency room on East Bay Drive. “They've already seen a number of, let's say, low-level beach emergencies, whether it's a jellyfish sting or somebody stepping on something sharp and those kinds of things, they can certainly take care of here."

Sharma said B2K Development, which built the Breeze complex, approached Mount Sinai to offer them the space to lease. The medical services provider had been setting up tents on the beach to do medical screenings and health education for about a decade, he said.

“And we thought this was a great opportunity, given this is the heart in many ways of the Long Beach community,” Sharma said. “To be able to offer the community outreach team something a little more than a tent was also a bright spot.”

Access to good primary care is important to prevent patients’ ailments from becoming worse and harder to treat, according to “State of the Primary Care Workforce, 2024,” a report released last month by the federal National Center for Health Workforce Analysis.

“Primary care is often the first contact a patient will have with the health care workforce and sets the trajectory for a positive or negative patient experience and outcome,” the report said.

The elevation of the facility, which is accessible from the boardwalk via stairs or a ramp, is above the FEMA floodplain, which means flooding like that which inundated the area during Superstorm Sandy is not a concern, B2K Development principal Jon Weiss said.

Long Beach City Council President Brendan Finn said the facility would provide a benefit for the whole city.

“Obviously it goes without saying that having more doctors and more medical care available to the citizens, that's a home run,” Finn said.