Mercy Hospital holds open house for new $12.5M Family Care Center

Catholic Health’s Mercy Hospital will host an open house Thursday to celebrate the completion of its new $12.5 million Family Care Center, which will open to patients next month.

The 16,000-square-foot center at 1000 N Village Ave. in Rockville Centre will offer music, food, crafts and tours to the public from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The clinic provides obstetrics, maternal-fetal medicine for high-risk patients, gynecology and pediatric care, along with services such as help applying for food stamps and Medicaid health coverage for people with low incomes and certain disabilities, and assistance getting food, clothing and other necessities. It also offers diabetes education, toy drives and twice-a-year baby showers for expectant mothers with gifts and free classes.

The facility will replace a 3,500-square-foot clinic now located inside the hospital.

It occupies 8,500 square feet on the first floor of the two-story building, with room for additional services on the second floor. The facility plans to add family medicine, cardiology and endocrinology, as well as other services, depending on the community’s needs, said Joseph Manopella, president of Mercy Hospital.

The center “is the culmination of a lot of work done by so many people, not only across this organization, but even outside,” Manopella said. The construction cost was funded in part by a $1.3 million grant from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation in Manhattan, and in part by $7.325 million from the state Department of Health, with the rest coming from the hospital, said Christopher Cells, vice president of ambulatory services at Mercy Hospital.

The hospital-based clinic used to get about 11,000 visits a year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the region in early 2020, but this year it is on track to get about 18,000 visits, Cells said. The increase was driven in part by all the community services the clinic provided during the pandemic, including food and social services, he said. “Individuals in the community began to become aware of who we were and what we offered,” he said.

About 90% of patients have Medicaid coverage and many live in Rockville Centre, Hempstead, Freeport, Roosevelt and Uniondale, according to the hospital.

The Family Care Center was founded about 40 years ago by the Congregation of the Infant Jesus, an order of nuns affiliated with the hospital, and its new building was constructed where the order’s convent once stood. During construction of the new building, a group of nuns was invited to sign a piece of wallboard that is now located behind a wall in a stairwell of the center, Catholic Health said.

The center got its start when Sister Margaret Sprague noticed that many patients had little to no insurance and asked the hospital to create a clinic for them, Sister Mary Louise Kelly said in an interview yesterday. Sprague, who died last year, “had an eye out for the poor,” Kelly said.

Even now, “it's very apparent that there's a great need in the surrounding community for good health services,” Kelly said. “The poverty level is just unbelievable, and it’s not even being recognized adequately. That's why the family health clinic should be of assistance to … people who can't get help anywhere else.”

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in 2012, she has also covered real estate and the business of health care.