Northwell Health upgrades labor-delivery unit at North Shore University Hospital

Northwell Health said Tuesday that North Shore University Hospital has opened a new patient recovery area and operating room in the labor and delivery unit of Katz Women’s Hospital.

The $8.5 million upgrade to the women’s hospital’s third floor added 5,000 square feet to an eight-bed, post-anesthesia recovery unit and a new labor and delivery operating room containing three infant resuscitation bays. The proximity of the bay helps reduce the time to transport newborns to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). 

Originally opened in 2011, the three-story Katz Women’s Hospital at North Shore has 73 single-bed rooms, postpartum and high-risk antepartum units for prolonged hospitals stays, a 51-bed NICU and a nursery.

The hospital delivered more than 6,800 babies in 2018 — collectively, Northwell’s 11 hospitals with maternity units delivered more than 39,200 babies in 2018, representing 17 percent of all babies born in New York State and 1 percent of births nationally, the health system said.

The upgrade project is part of a $212 million-plus investment Northwell Health is making in expanding and renovating maternity units at six of its hospitals on Long Island and in New York City and Westchester County.

Northwell's local plans include an $80 million project at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore to construct 11 private maternity rooms and to convert 29 double-occupancy rooms into 18 private ones. Two labor and delivery rooms will be added, increasing the total to nine, along with two more operating rooms, for a total of four. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2020.

As part of Northwell's $212 million investment, Huntington Hospital last fall opened its $12.5 million Center for Mothers and Babies, which expanded the hospital’s labor and delivery unit to 19 private rooms, a newborn nursery, a nine-bay special-care nursery, and dedicated parking and entrance areas.

Elsewhere in the health system, construction is underway on an $80 million women and newborns center set to open in late 2021 at Staten Island University Hospital, and a new NICU due there in 2023.

In Westchester County next year construction is scheduled to begin on a $21.2 million renovation and expansion of the labor and delivery unit at Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow. The project will create 12 more private postpartum rooms, six nursery bays and six additional neonatal intensive care bays. Construction is expected to be complete by late 2022.

New Hyde Park-based Northwell Health is the largest private employer in the state, with 68,000 employees.