Skip to main content

New East Hampton Emergency Department Is Open

Thu, 05/22/2025 - 12:51
The Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department is now open.
Durell Godfrey

The new Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department opened on Pantigo Place last Thursday, on the eve of Memorial Day weekend.

The 22,000-square-foot emergency facility, which also features an imaging and diagnostic center, provides health care services that may save lives and has already sharply reduced the time needed to transport East Hampton Town residents or visitors experiencing a health emergency to a state-of-the-art medical facility. Previously, the nearest emergency room to East Hampton Town was at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, and navigating the South Fork’s summer traffic to transport patients to the hospital meant a race against time when the stakes could not be higher.

On Friday, “we had at least seven calls,” said Marcia Dias, second assistant chief of the East Hampton Village Emergency Medical Service Department. She was glad to see the freestanding emergency room open in time for the busy weekend, but, depending on the particulars of an emergency, not every patient can be taken there. One midday call, for example, required the patient to be delivered to Stony Brook Southampton. “It took almost an hour and 20 minutes to get back from Southampton Hospital to East Hampton,” Ms. Dias said. “Welcome back, summer.”

Within 20 minutes of the ambulance’s return, another call came in, “and we were able to take a patient to East Hampton. It was unbelievable,” she said, the time from receiving the call to delivering the patient was no more than half that of returning from the hospital to the Emergency Services Building in the village. “What a delight that was, compared to the previous call.”

The East Hampton facility operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, including holidays. The facility’s imaging center is also open to patients, who can schedule appointments through Stony Brook Southampton Hospital by calling 631-396-6400 Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m.

The emergency department, which is adjacent to the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation building, features advanced diagnostic technologies and lifesaving treatments including a dedicated resuscitation room; cardiac monitoring capabilities in every exam room; specialized fast-track treatment rooms for general, pediatric, obstetrics/gynecology, and ophthalmology patients; two isolation rooms; a comprehensive imaging center featuring advanced diagnostic technologies including M.R.I., CT scan, ultrasound, and X-ray; an on-site ambulance for hospital transport, and eco-friendly elements including rooftop solar panels, a rain garden, and native plantings.

“The new Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department represents a significant step in ensuring that residents and visitors on the East End have timely access to expert emergency care, reinforcing our mission to deliver world-class health care closer to home,” William Wertheim, Stony Brook Medicine’s executive vice president, said in the announcement of the facility’s opening.

Parts of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital are more than 80 years old, and a new facility on the State University’s Stony Brook Southampton campus, farther to the west, is planned. The new emergency department in East Hampton features ample space, high ceilings, and natural light. An ambulance entrance is at the rear of the building and walk-in patients enter through the front.

In 2019, the East Hampton Town Board unanimously agreed to enter into a 50-year lease agreement, with optional extensions totaling an additional 49 years, with the Southampton Hospital Association for the parcel at 400 Pantigo Place. That agreement followed a 2018 public hearing and came at the urging of officials including the mayor of East Hampton Village, the chief of the Montauk Fire Department, and the chairman of the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation,

More than $32 million has been raised to finance the emergency department, along with a New York State grant of $10 million. “We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from our neighbors,” Julia McCormack, president of the Southampton Hospital Foundation, said in December, when construction and outfitting of the emergency department were nearing completion, “but also, there have been a host of other organizations that have joined with us to make sure that we are successful.”
--
Note: This article has been updated since it first appeared online.

 

Your support for The East Hampton Star helps us deliver the news, arts, and community information you need. Whether you are an online subscriber, get the paper in the mail, delivered to your door in Manhattan, or are just passing through, every reader counts. We value you for being part of The Star family.

Your subscription to The Star does more than get you great arts, news, sports, and outdoors stories. It makes everything we do possible.