The hospital's Behavioral Health Clinic Coney Island Hospital is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

teaching hospital A teaching hospital is a hospital or medical centre that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities and are often co-located ...

located in the

Coney Island Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach to its east, L ...

neighborhood of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It is owned by

NYC Health + Hospitals NYC Health + Hospitals, officially the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), operates the public hospitals and clinics in New York City as a public benefit corporation. , HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the Uni ...

, a public benefit corporation of the city. The hospital is home to FDNY-EMS Station 43, formerly NYC-EMS Station 31, and is a major clinical affiliate for

clinical clerkship Clinical clerkships encompass a period of medical education in which students – medical, nursing, dental, or otherwise – practice medicine under the supervision of a health practitioner. Medical clerkships In medical education, a clerksh ...

with the

New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine The New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYIT-COM) is a private medical school located primarily in Old Westbury, New York. It also has a degree-granting campus in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Founded in 1977, NYIT-COM is an ...

. The hospital's name was legally changed in 2015 to NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island, proclaiming a change "from a hospital-centric corporation to a healthcare delivery system." The longer name was part of the parent body's shortening of its name from ''New York City Health and Hospital Corporation''.

History

In 1875, Coney Island Hospital began as a

first aid First aid is the first and immediate assistance given to any person with either a minor or serious illness or injury, with care provided to preserve life, prevent the condition from worsening, or to promote recovery. It includes initial in ...

station on the oceanfront beach near West Third Street. Most cases were feet cut by broken bottles. On May 12, 1902, a small wooden building, one and one half stories high, on Sea Breeze Avenue, was rented to serve as an emergency hospital during the summer months. It was called the Sea Breeze Hospital but officially known as Reception Hospital, an annex of the

Kings County Hospital Kings County Hospital Center is a municipal hospital located in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. It is owned and operated by NYC Health + Hospitals, a municipal agency that runs New York City's public hospitals. It has ...

. It had 20 beds and facilities for emergency treatment. Patients requiring more were taken to Kings County Hospital, about seven miles away, in a horse-drawn ambulance. Rapid population growth in southern Brooklyn called for a large and permanent hospital. Construction of "the first part of the Hammett Pavillion, the yellow building facing Ocean Parkway," to build a 100-bed hospital, began in 1908, north of Coney Island Creek and east of Ocean Parkway. With the help of Robert W. Hebberd, Coney Island Hospital was dedicated on May 18, 1910, then a six-building complex. ''Hammett'' was enlarged 1926 to 1928, resulting in 300 beds and five more floors. Population growth continued and so in 1954 the two white brick towers that make up the current hospital were opened.

21st century

In Spring 2006, Coney Island Hospital opened a new inpatient bed tower. By 2011, the hospital became the biggest employer in southern Brooklyn.

Hurricane Irene Hurricane Irene was a large and destructive tropical cyclone which affected much of the Caribbean and East Coast of the United States during late August 2011. The ninth named storm, first hurricane, and first major hurricane of the 2011 At ...

resulted in the hospital's first full-scale evacuation, since the buildings are located in Flood Zone A. Coney Island Hospital was severely damaged in 2012 due to

Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as ''Superstorm Sandy'') was an extremely destructive and strong Atlantic hurricane, as well as the largest Atlantic hurricane on record as measured by diameter, with tropical-storm-force winds spann ...

. As a result, the hospital proposes to spend $738 million on renovations, including constructing a new 11-story tower. The new tower is under construction and the completion date was scheduled to be June 2020, but due to COVID-19, the due date is moved to 2022. The Ida G. Israel Community Health Center was renovated and reopened in 2015. A ten floor structure is expected to be completed fall of 2022, at which time ''Hammett'' will be demolished to facilitate building a flood-resistant barrier. The new building will be named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the hospital will be changed to South Brooklyn Health.

Services

The hospital has been recognized for clinical innovations in Primary Care, Adolescent Medicine, Nuclear Medicine and Emergency Services. Interpreter services are available 24/7 in over 130 languages, though changing demographics has resulted in challenges for staff. At 371 beds, Coney Island Hospital is the major medical service provider in southern Brooklyn with over 15,000 discharges and over 255,000 outpatient visits. The hospital's emergency department was renovated after Hurricane Sandy and now handles nearly 90,000 annual visits. As part of the upcoming renovation, Coney Island Hospital is planned to downsize to 351 beds, but with single-patient rooms in the new building.

Controversy

The 2016 day-after-admission death of a patient who was treated as if emotionally disturbed and shackled to her bed was investigated and found to be due to mistreatment, resulting in "three of the facility’s top officials" leaving their positions and several others reduced in rank or taking early retirement. At the time, there had been reports the "scores of people had been hired at Coney Island Hospital without proper authorization".

References

External links