Catholic Health opens $17M primary, specialty and urgent care clinic in Centereach

Catholic Health is set to open its new $17 million primary, specialty and urgent care center in Centereach on Wednesday.

The first phase of the facility  at 2112 Middle Country Rd. includes a 43,000-square-foot section of a former Ocean State Job Lot discount store. Urgent care and X-ray services will be available starting on Wednesday, Catholic Health said. The center will begin offering primary care, CAT scans, MRIs and mammograms next week.

By the end of this year, the facility will offer women’s health, cardiology, neurosciences, orthopedics, podiatry, ear nose and throat and allergy medicine and a GI endoscopy procedure suite, Catholic Health said. The center will open a retail pharmacy in September, and laboratory services are expected to open by late this year or early next year.

An additional 20,000-square-foot space is expected to open next year.

“It's almost like a bedless hospital, meaning patients can show up on demand without an appointment, come in, get an urgent care visit, [and] they could be then scheduled for follow up with primary care right down the hall,” Dr. Patrick O’Shaughnessy, president and CEO of Rockville Centre-based Catholic Health, said in an interview. Catholic Health also plans to open a primary and specialty care center in Riverhead by the end of the year, he said.

The health care system was scheduled to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday in Centereach with elected officials and representatives of Simone Healthcare Development, owner and developer of the facility. In a statement released by Catholic Health, Brookhaven Town Supervisor Edward Romaine said the new clinic “makes health care more easily accessible for our residents while creating jobs for local health care workers.”

Long Island is home to a growing number of clinics opening in former retail spaces, as health care and hospital networks seek out large, conveniently located spaces for outpatient services.

In May, Stony Brook Advanced Specialty Care at Lake Grove opened primary and specialty care offices in a 60,000-square-foot space previously occupied by the Sears department store at Smith Haven Mall. The facility is expected to grow to at least 170,000 square feet by 2027.  

Northwell Health is building an 80,000-square-foot outpatient center on the first floor of a former Lord & Taylor department store in Garden City, and NYU Langone Health has leased an approximately 162,000-square-foot Lord & Taylor in Manhasset.

Large outpatient facilities are “a significant piece of the future for health care,” O’Shaughnessy said. “That does not mean that hospitals are not important. They are, and we are making investments in our hospitals as well, but you need to have these … ambulatory suites and services of various sizes and locations, so that the health care consumer can easily access care.”

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.