Brooklyn Hospital Center Will Start $25M Emergency Room Upgrade

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — The neighborhood's hospital will get a multi-million dollar upgrade to its emergency room over the next year, officials announced.

The Brooklyn Hospital Center, found next to Fort Greene Park at 121 Dekalb Ave., will break ground this week on an 18-month project to renovate its emergency department.

The renovation will bring a new lobby along with new triage, exam and treatment rooms to create a better experience and response time for patients, hospital officials said. It will be paid for in part by a $25 million grant from the state's health department, the largest award to a New York City health provider in the year the grant was given.

“We already serve more than 70,000 patients each year in our Emergency Department,” notes Mr. Terrinoni. “This renovation will result in a state-of-the-art facility within lifesaving minutes of our neighbors’ homes.”

The renovation will include "bright and airy spaces" for a new waiting area, a new entrance to the emergency department and a new hospital lobby. The lobby will be transparent and create direct access to the triage rooms, TBHC Board Chair Liz Fontaine said.

The upgrade will make the registration process quicker so patients can move to treatment faster. The new triage, exam and treatment rooms will include a "rapid assessment treatment area," bariatric, psychiatric observation, cardiac treatment and bereavement rooms.

The renovation will also create better space and flow for support services, including a radiology room, a CT scan room, a satellite pharmacy and a discharge room.

The Brooklyn Hospital Center, which was Brooklyn's first hospital when it opened in 1845, said that the upgrade will further improve its already-fast emergency services.

The center has a 100 percent rate for EMS arrival to intervention for its patients in under 90 minutes, compared to the state average of 87.7 percent.

TBHC is a clinical affiliate of The Mount Sinai Hospital and an academic affiliate of The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The ground breaking will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday in front of the hospital's Dekalb Avenue entrance. It will be attended by hospital officials, state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, Assembly Member Walter Mosley and other guests.