Take the Time to Get the E.R. Right
East Hampton Town and Southampton Hospital are moving quickly toward breaking ground on a emergency-care facility, possibly off Pantigo Road just east of Town Hall. Many questions remain, and we are concerned that in the eagerness to get moving, some of the numbers used to justify the roughly $40 million project are being overstated. A hospital adjunct of some kind appears necessary within the town’s borders, especially since Southampton Hospital may be relocated westward in a few years to a new site on County Road 39.
For East Hampton’s ambulance services, a treatment center closer by makes a lot of sense. Even now, a routine trip to the Southampton emergency room takes a considerable amount of time. During the peak season, ambulances frequently have to return east after an emergency with lights flashing and sirens blaring in order to get to another call. Being able to turn an ambulance around at an East Hampton facility and put it back in service awaiting another emergency could mean the difference between life and death.
Location is a question. The hospital administration prefers the town’s 4.5-acre ball field on Pantigo Place over a much larger town-owned property on Stephen Hand’s Path. Whichever site is chosen, it is highly likely that a new traffic light on Montauk Highway will have to be installed. A light controlling the entrance and exit at Pantigo Place may be less disruptive of through traffic, though this would have to be studied closely before anyone could say for sure.
For patients from Montauk, Springs, and Amagansett, whether going to the new emergency facility in an ambulance or getting there by other means, the Pantigo Place location would be better. It also is important to consider our summer visitors, many of whom stay in motels and other accommodations on Napeague and in Montauk. According to Suffolk County figures, there were beds for about 11,400 motel and hotel guests in East Hampton Town in 2010 — most of them from Amagansett east — an astonishing figure with obvious implications for first responders.
Other numbers warrant more clarity. The hospital has proposed eventually having a 64,000-square-foot building, which would make it among the largest structures in East Hampton Town. Does it really need to be that large? Maybe. Another startling statistic offered by the hospital is 17,000, the number of patient visits to the hospital originating from East Hampton annually, which needs a bit more explanation. It ought to be made clear just how many of those thousands of visits would be handled at a new site and how many would still require going to the hospital in Southampton. It is not clear at this point how either the patient or building plan numbers were arrived at and whether they justify the calculations that led to the East Hampton plan.
Another concern is that the Pantigo Place property is adjacent to a Suffolk County Water Authority well and water tower. What the environmental impact would be of such a massive facility and whether sewage treatment would be adequate to keep chemical and pharmaceutical contamination from reaching drinking or surface waters must be studied.
A $10 million promise of a state grant puts pressure on East Hampton Town and the hospital to get moving on construction as soon as possible. However, making sure the facility is the right size, built in the best location, and would result in only minimal ecological harm should take precedence over haste.