Dr. N. Patrick Hennessey, who has practiced dermatology out of the Wainscott Professional Center on Montauk Highway for the last 22 years, has relocated his practice to Southampton Village after being told to vacate the center.
Dr. Hennessey, who had been subleasing space from Stony Brook Medicine’s Meeting House Lane Medical Practice, described an abrupt eviction in July and announced his new location in an Aug. 28 letter to patients. He was left scrambling, he wrote, to see patients who had booked appointments months in advance into September.
“I was unsuccessful at ever arranging a meeting with anyone from Stony Brook to discuss this further,” Dr. Hennessey wrote, adding that he’d appealed to Dr. John Reilly, president of the Meeting House Lane group, for more time to make the transition. “Each of my two phone calls with Dr. Reilly were ended by his reinforcing that we had nothing to discuss and appropriate measures would immediately be instituted if the premises were not vacant by July 31.”
On July 29, Dr. Hennessey wrote, a junk-removal company arrived at the Wainscott Professional Center “to cart off to the dump the exam tables and medical equipment that for over 20 years served this community.”
In an emailed statement to The Star on Tuesday, Dr. Todd Griffin, Stony Brook Medicine’s vice dean of clinical affairs and vice president for clinical services, responded to Dr. Hennessey’s assertions by saying Stony Brook has “a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Hennessey and would like to continue to work with him.”
The space was a “month-to-month sublease,” Dr. Griffin wrote, noting that Dr. Hennessey “was provided with the required notice.”
The decision, Dr. Griffin said in his email, “was driven by Meeting House Lane’s space needs to support its primary care providers and enhance patient access and experience.” He added that Dr. Hennessey had been “offered the opportunity to relocate his practice to another nearby Wainscott location,” but said the dermatologist had declined to discuss it.
In his own letter, Dr. Hennessey — who also has an office in Manhattan — alleged that a Meeting House Lane employee told him the rent would have been “almost four times” what he had been paying in Wainscott.
“The business and real estate interests of Stony Brook University clearly took precedence over any discourse relative to the continuation of a longstanding dermatology practice on the South Fork,” Dr. Hennessey wrote.
A community member stepped forward with information that led to securing a new location, he wrote.
Dr. Hennessey, a longtime practitioner at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and instructor with Stony Brook Medicine, added that he is considering resigning from those positions. He said he would remain a member of the N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center faculty, as he has been for the last 45 years.
“All of us at Hennessey Dermatology are grateful for the support and understanding of our patients and friends within this community,” he wrote.
