A Shot In The Arm For Medical Building

A long contemplated medical office building, an 18,000-square-foot South ampton Hospital facility at Pantigo Place, East Hampton, moved closer to reality this week when the East Hampton Village Preservation Society offered to spearhead a $5 million capital fund-raising campaign to build and endow it.

Larry Munson of East Hampton, a management consultant who is chairman of the Preservation Society, said his board will meet with the hospital's in coming weeks to plan details.

The society has stipulated that any money raised be guaranteed to remain in East Hampton.

"Crisis" Foreseen

"Within six months we will have a crisis in orthodox medicine in East Hampton," said Dr. Jerome DeCosse, a Preservation Society member who has offered not only to head the campaign but to help recruit new, well-trained young internists to work in the building. Dr. DeCosse, who has a house on Highway Behind the Pond, is a New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center surgeon.

Speaking over the weekend to representatives of community groups and local government, including Edna Steck, director of the East Hampton Town Department of Human Services, Dr. DeCosse stressed the importance of cementing an East Hampton connection with South ampton Hospital, which he called "the only game in town."

"There is an urgency to develop a facility quickly and effectively," he said, "by July 1999."

Medical Needs

Ms. Steck, however, said this week that further "needs assessments" should be completed before proceeding. She heads the committee of officials and others who will work with the hospital and the Preservation Society.

Dr. DeCosse disagreed, saying such studies could delay fund-raising and construction "by four years." The surgeon expressed concern that some longtime physicians here will soon retire or move, leaving the area even more "underserved" than it is now.

Last summer, members of the Preservation Society who responded to a "quality of life" survey rated local ambulance services "very good." Not so for the convenience and quality of medical care, which was rated in the lowest categories, along with traffic congestion, availability of affordable housing, noise, and taxes.

Not Leaving

As of this week, however, the number of doctors who are here for the foreseeable future appeared stable.

Dr. Robert Plachy, a family practitioner with offices in Amagansett and Montauk, confirmed that he is here to stay, and Dr. Gavino Mapula, who has practiced in Montauk for 15 years, quashed rumors that he is retiring.

"I am enjoying my practice," said Dr. Mapula. The internist said he still makes house calls, though he belongs to no managed-care plans and is not affiliated with a hospital. He said he referred patients to Southampton Hospital emergency physicians when necessary.

Peconic Bay Medical

Besides Dr. Plachy and Dr. Mapula, physicians here include Dr. Blake Kerr who practices in Wainscott, but cannot admit patients to Southampton Hospital, and Dr. Daniel Lessner, Dr. Kay Umana, and Dr. John Oppenheimer who practice in Sag Harbor and have hospital privileges.

Meanwhile, the hospital has established a new physician-owned, for-profit corporation, a kind of office-without-walls to help doctors manage their practices cost-efficiently.

Known as Peconic Bay Med ical, P.C., it has signed up 14 doc tor s, mo st ly in Sout hampton, as well as Dr. Michael Israel and Dr. Raymond Medler, East Hampton internists. It also is "recruiting a young internist," according to Dr. Louis Pizzarello, the group's spokesman.

Amagansett Facility

Not a part of the Peconic Bay corporation are Dr. Plachy, "who elected not to join," and Dr. Gail Schonfeld, an East Hampton pediatrician, who confirmed that she had "declined."

Dr. Plachy noted that he was talking with other hospitals, such as New York and Stony Brook University Hospitals, about the creation of another medical entity. Like Peconic Bay Medical, its participating physicians would gain an advantage as part of a major entity when negotiating contracts with managed care organizations and others.

McMahon Building

Dr. Plachy and Dr. Schonfeld have indicated that they might move their offices to a separate proposed medical facility - a 6,500-square-foot building on Montauk Highway in Amagansett, across the street from the I.G.A.

That project was presented to the Town Planning Board in January 1997 by Harold McMahon Jr. and has been on hold ever since.

Mr. McMahon, a plumbing contractor whose great-uncle, Dr. David Edwards, practiced family medicine in East Hampton for decades, recently chose a new architect for the building and said "several" physicians and others in the medical field had inquired about space.

Another Wrinkle

Another wrinkle in the medical picture is the uncertainty about when, or if, the Yardley family of Sag Harbor, who own the East Hampton Medical Group building on Pantigo Road, can convert it into a funeral home.

Dr. Israel, Dr. Medler, and Dr. Schonfeld now have offices in that building.

The East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals has approved the conversion, but neighbors have filed a suit in State Supreme Court challenging the decision.

Economic Viability

While skepticism remains about the hospital's fiscal management, Dr. John J. Ferry Jr., its president, has reiterated in recent weeks that cost-cutting measures taken at the end of 1997 have stabilized finances.

Its Pantigo Road proposal has been on the East Hampton Town Planning Board agenda several times during the past year, even as mounting financial woes forced the hospital to slow construction on outpatient facilities and to lay off employees.

Plans for both the Pantigo Road and Amagansett buildings call for X-ray facilities, including mammography, and a blood laboratory. For the potential tenants of both buildings, particularly in light of the sea change sweeping health care nationwide, the decades-old question of economic viability persists.

SUSAN ROSENBAUM