Huntington Hospital recently renovated its two cardiac catheterization labs and unveiled new state-of-the-art diagnostic technology. The renovated labs are a combined 1,200 square feet and cost approximately $5 million.
In addition to the labs which each have a control room, there is a third-floor suite that includes nine beds and a holding area where patients are treated pre-and post-operatively.
“With the renovation of our labs, we continue to be able to provide our community with the highest level of cardiovascular care right here at home,” said Gaurav Rao, MD, director of interventional cardiology at Huntington Hospital. “This means faster diagnoses, efficient treatments, and ultimately, better outcomes for our patients. Having access to such advanced care close to home is not just a convenience, it’s a critical factor in saving lives and improving the overall health of our community.”
The new labs leverage this technology with integrated Coroflow Cardiovascular System to diagnose coronary microvascular dysfunction and coronary spasm, which was made possible through an anonymous donation. Computer-generated coronary physiology maps are utilized to diagnose coronary artery disease and guide interventions. Complex coronary interventions are routinely performed using coherence tomography (OCT), an advanced coronary imaging tool that allows precise plaque characterization to inform optimal calcium modification and tailored stent implant strategies.
“By incorporating cutting-edge technology, we are elevating the standard of cardiac care available in our community,” said Nick Fitterman, MD, president, Huntington Hospital. “This is a testament to our commitment to advancing health care and meeting the needs of our community with the highest level of excellence.”
Thoracic surgeon Dr. Andrea Carollo in front of the ION robot. Photo courtesy Lee Weissman
By Daniel Dunaief
Early and prompt detection of any cancer can and often does lead to better patient outcomes. With that in mind, Huntington Hospital recently added a new ION Robotic-Assisted Bronchoscopy to identify and perform biopsies on lung nodules. The robotic system, which the hospital has used on 25 patients, can trim the time for a diagnosis to as little as two to four weeks from as much as 70 days.
“We felt it would be an appropriate investment for the patient population so they wouldn’t have to travel to get a diagnosis in a timely manner,” said thoracic surgeon Dr. Andrea Carollo.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer in Suffolk County, according to Dr. Nick Fitterman, Executive Director of Huntington Hospital. On top of that, two out of three lung cancers are in the outer third of the lungs, which the ION Robot specializes in sampling. Prior to the introduction of this system, patients either traveled to South Shore Hospital or would receive more extensive surgery to sample nodules.
For 90 percent of the patients, these nodules are benign. Not every nodule warrants a biopsy. Doctors use standard guidelines to monitor nodules and perform a procedure when these nodules require further investigation. With the ION Robotic-Assisted Bronchoscopy, these patients, who are under general anesthesia during the analysis, can go home the same day.
Get screened
Huntington Hospital. File photo
Doctors typically recommend further evaluation when nodules come up on a CAT scan. While many residents receive screenings for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, cervical cancer and prostate cancer, few take the time to receive a lung screen, even among those who would benefit from initial and ongoing surveillance. About 79 percent of people eligible for a mammography get one. Of the people eligible for lung cancer screening, however, only about 6 percent receive them, Fitterman added.
“We are woefully, woefully deficient in lung cancer screening,” Fitterman said. “There’s an effective screening tool out there that is widely under utilized.”
The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends that high risk patients between 50 and 80 receive lung cancer screening. High risk patients include those who have smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years and are either current smokers or have quit smoking within the last 15 years.
“If you are a smoker, you should definitely get involved in lung cancer screening,” said Carollo.
By screening more patients, the hospital can offer immediate services, including surgery and various treatment regimes such as chemotherapy.
Options
Once a CAT scan reveals a nodule that warrants further imaging, doctors have three potential surgical options.
They can use trans-thoracic biopsy if the nodule is of a good size, is in a favorable location and the interventional radiologist performing the procedure thinks it is technically possible.
The overall risk of a collapsed lung is about 10 percent with this approach, but much higher in patients with central lesions andconsiderable emphysema. The risk is lower in patients with peripheral nodules and no emphysema. If a pneumothorax occurs, sometimes the patient requires a chest tube and hospital stay for as long as one to seven days.
With ION, the procedure is done through a breathing tube in the mouth and into the airways. The risk of a collapsed lung is less than one percent.
If there is a high suspicion of cancer, doctors can also go straight to surgery, which could be the case for a 50 year-old smoker with a 0.7 centimeter nodule that grew to one centimeter and shows activity on a PET scan.
In that case, the nodule and a portion of the lung are removed and sent to pathology, which evaluates it on site and, in about 20 minutes, can indicate whether it’s cancer. From there, doctors can take more lung tissue and lymph nodes for completion of a cancer operation. They review the tissue samples, which takes about 7 to 10 days to get a full answer of the type of cancer and stage if any mutations occurred.
The ION procedure, which has been available for over five years, decreases the risk of a collapsed lung and bleeding and provides an analysis of the nodule more rapidly. The complication rate is lower than with trans thoracic surgery.
At this point, Carollo is doing the majority of these ION-assisted biopsies, while pulmonologist, Dr. Nazir Lone, is doing some, as well.
In the ION procedure, doctors use a roller ball and a wheel that requires eye-hand coordination.
The company provides training to get certified and it takes about 10 to 15 of these procedures for a surgeon to feel comfortable doing them on his or her own, Carollo said.
Huntington Hospital ensures that doctors have sufficient training before allowing them to treat or diagnose patients. “Whenever we adopt any new technology or procedure, we have significant quality guardrails,” said Fitterman.
“We make sure that anyone operating on a machine first is proctored by someone else who is facile with it. They sign off and say, ‘Yes, you now met competencies. You can do it.’”
The speed of the analysis has important implications for patients. “If we can get this done in 30 days from the time we find something to treatment, that’s huge,” Carollo said. “Patients tend to have better outcomes. They live longer,” he continued. Delays over 50 days lead to decreased one and five year survival.
Other new developments
Huntington Hospital has several other new developments in the works.
The hospital is building a new cancer center in Greenlawn as well as expanding its labor and delivery capacity to provide services to more pregnant women.
Ever since St. Catherine of Siena closed its obstetrical unit on Feb. 1, Huntington Hospital has seen an increase in the number of pregnant patients.
The labor and delivery suites will add four beds and will refresh the space the hospital currently uses. The mother-baby units are “beautiful,” but the suites have to “catch up to that,” said Fitterman.
In the third quarter of next year, during the renovation, the labor and delivery areas will move to a place where the old emergency space had been. The improvements are expected to take about three months.
A top source for consumers searching for doctors and hospitals, Healthgrades continued to recognize several departments and clinical efforts within Huntington Hospital, while adding others.
Healthgrades named Huntington Hospital one of the 100 best hospitals for Coronary Intervention for the fourth year in a row.
An affiliate of Northwell Health, Huntington Hospital also was ranked fourth in critical care in the state and, among other recognition, received five star distinction for Cranial Neurosurgery, earned the 2025 Pulmonary Care Excellence Award, and was named among the top 10 percent in the nation for overall pulmonary services.
“Healthgrades is one of the more recognizable accolades that hospitals can achieve,” said Dr. Nick Fitterman, Executive Director of Huntington Hospital.
The hospital has hung two banners and plans to celebrate the distinctions with staff on Nov. 6th.
“People want to play for a winner,” said Fitterman. “It really does make the team members, the doctors, nurses and support staff all feel better, knowing that they’re in health care, they’re compassionate people. To see the recognition makes them feel proud.”
Through ongoing and growing recognition of the expertise and services available to patients, word has spread about the quality of care people receive at Huntington Hospital.
“Our doctors that run the Emergency Room are seeing more people from zip codes outside of our usual primary and secondary catchment area as the reputation of the hospital is spreading,” said Fitterman. “I like to think that it’s because of excellent care” as well as people telling friends and family about their experiences.
Patients outside the normal coverage area mostly live to the east and south on Long Island.
Healthgrades also gave ongoing high rankings to the coronary interventional procedures for four years in a row, provided a five-star rating for treatment of stroke for two years in a row, and named the hospital a five-star provider for treatment of pneumonia for seven years in a year.
Huntington earned five stars for its treatment of sepsis for the third consecutive year.
‘We don’t set out to achieve any recognition,” said Fitterman. “The core ideology that I espouse to all team members is that excellence in clinical care is the best business strategy. Provide the best care possible and all this other stuff will fall into place.”
While Huntington received a top five percent recognition for cardiac interventions, which includes stents for people who have heart attacks and pacemakers for those whose conduction system is not working well, the hospital recently completed a $5 million renovation of its cardiac catheterization lab.
The lab, which will have a ceremonial opening in the next few weeks, will implement “some of the most advanced technology,” said Fitterman.
Amid predictions about extended hospital stays as the population ages, Fitterman suggested that Huntington Hospital was focused on improving the way it treats diseases to get patients out of the hospital and return them to their normal lives in a timely fashion.
In addition to enhancements in cardiac care, Huntington Hospital has added new neurosurgeons to the staff and has invested in a Zeiss microscope that has a three dimensional display.
“You’d think you’re seeing a Star Wars movie,” said Fitterman.
Huntington Hospital taps into the Northwell Health network, helping patients benefit from specialists spread throughout the system.
Hospital staff can consult with tumor boards that include hematologists, oncologists, and radiation oncologists spread throughout the Northwell network.
To help patients manage the stresses and strains that come from giving up control when they spend time in a hospital, Huntington converted several years ago to a dining service that allows people to order their meals according to their own schedule.
Patients can call any time of day to place an order. Food is then delivered to their room within 40 minutes, with no set breakfast, lunch and dinner times.
“Food is health,” said Fitterman. “If they were getting the same tasteless food that hospitals are renowned for serving, they would not be contributing to a healthy, therapeutic environment.”
For meetings, the hospital rarely orders from outside caterers, choosing food from the hospital kitchen.
The hospital has restructured the workflow to prevent any additional costs for the round-the-clock service.
Fitterman calls the chicken quesadillas “outstanding,” while he said some patients have come back to the cafeteria after they are discharged because of the popularity of the salmon.
Fitterman added that he is always looking out for ways to improve the experience for patient and their families.
“When I walk the halls, I’m still looking at things we can do better,” he said.
Dr. Nick Fitterman with a copy of the $1 million check from New York State. Photo from Northwell Health
With financial support from New York State, Huntington Hospital is building it, and they hope undocumented and uninsured community members will have an easier time receiving care.
Dr. Nick Fitterman with a copy of the $1 million check from New York State. Photo from Northwell Health
At the former site of a Capital One Bank building at 1572 New York Avenue in Huntington Station, Huntington Hospital is renovating the building to create the Northwell Family Health Center at Huntington.
The center, which will open in the fall of 2023, will replace the Dolan Family Health Center in Greenlawn and will provide preventive care for children and adults.
The square footage of the new center will be about the same as the original family center but will have more clinical space. The current location in Greenlawn, which is 26 years old and will remain open until the Huntington Station location is up and running, has 3,000 square feet for meeting space. Huntington Hospital will dedicate that space to clinical programs.
The new location is “aligned with public transportation to improve the access for the people it serves,” said Dr. Nick Fitterman, executive director at Huntington Hospital. About 30% of the people who currently go to the Greenlawn facility have difficulty getting to the location. “Many of the people [the new site] serves can walk to the center.”
Working with Island Harvest, the Northwell Family Health Center will address food insecurity as well as overall health. Patients with high blood pressure, diabetes and heart failure will receive nutritional counseling which, coupled with the food banks, can provide the appropriate and necessary foods.
Those patients without diseases will also have access to fresh food through Island Harvest, Fitterman said.
In addition to providing a place for people who otherwise might not have a health care connection, the site will reduce some of the burden created when people use an emergency room for conditions that, when properly monitored, won’t require urgent services.
“When you come to a health care center like this, you get a continuity of care,” said Fitterman. That provides “better outcomes at a lower cost.”
At the Greenlawn facility on Wednesday, state Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie (D-Bronx) and Assemblyman Steve Stern (D-Dix Hills) presented the health center with a $1 million grant from New York State which will support the transition to the new facility, Fitterman said.
Donations from community members also help the center, which is being built to address a “gap in our community,” which exists in every community across the country, the doctor said.
On Wednesday, the Dolan Family Health Center in Greenlawn planned to host a baby shower for over 40 women who were expecting children.
The women are “single moms with no network of support,” Fitterman said. With balloons and tables filled with wrapped supplies like diapers, “we are connecting them to each other” to provide connections among these families.
The people coming to the center would otherwise not get antenatal care, which not only “improves their heath, but improves the health of their unborn babies,” Fitterman added.
Dr. Nick Fitterman said they wouldn't necessarily endorse a COVID-19 vaccine immediately without first getting all the information. Photo from Huntington Hospital
Huntington Hospital won’t automatically endorse a COVID-19 vaccine, even if it receives approval from the federal government.
The hospital plans to evaluate the data from the vaccine’s phase 3 trials to ensure that the vaccine is safe and effective.
“We’ll see if things are starting to uptick long before it’s more obvious to the public.”
— Nick Fitterman
“It’s part of our oath, ‘Do no harm,’” said Dr. Nick Fitterman, executive director at Huntington Hospital. “If we don’t think the safety is there, I will scream it from the rooftops. It has to be a combination of safety and efficacy.”
Fitterman said at least seven vaccines are in phase 3 trials, with over 250 experimental vaccines in the works in total.
Fitterman was pleased to see that nine vaccine makers signed a pledge to uphold medical standards and not succumb to governmental pressure for rapid approval.
At this point, Fitterman would only take a vaccine after publication of the evidence from the clinical trials.
Once he is convinced that a vaccine is safe and effective, he said he would feel an urgency to take it as a health care worker.
“If you take care of people who are high risk, you’re going to need to take it,” Fitterman said.
The hospital would likely have the same policy for a COVID vaccine that it does for a flu vaccination: if workers choose not to get a vaccine, they will be required to wear a mask.
For the flu, hospital workers with purple badges on their name tags have had a flu shot.
At this point, it is unclear how long a COVID-19 vaccination might provide potential protection. Like tetanus or mumps, no vaccine wards off infection indefinitely, which means people will likely require boosters.
“I’m more worried about people getting complacent because they have been vaccinated,” Fitterman said.
Years down the road, the virus could return.
Asked whether those people who have antibodies for the virus would need a vaccine, Fitterman highlighted a recent case in Hong Kong. Published in the journal Lancet, doctors shared the story of one patient who contracted COVID-19 and then tested positive again.
The virus currently has several strains, so a vaccine might provide greater protection than natural antibodies against a single type of COVID-19.
The man who contracted the virus twice had antibodies that “didn’t protect him from another infection,” but he did not have any symptoms during the second positive test.
An infection in which a person develops antibodies could “protect you from the disease, but it doesn’t [necessarily] protect you from getting infected again,” Fitterman said.
A health care worker in particular would benefit from a vaccine that prevented infection from numerous strains to prevent that worker from spreading a disease to which he or she would likely be exposed during the course of any increase in cases.
With the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 overlapping with the flu, Fittterman strongly urged residents to get a flu shot, which would help prevent the virus from overwhelming a health care system that might again face an influx of hospitalizations from the coronavirus.
“It’s part of our oath, ‘Do no harm.'”
— Nick Fitterman
Huntington Hospital recently started making the flu vaccine available to frontline workers and urged people to get flu shots this month. He reminded people that the vaccine only works two weeks after an injection after the immune system has had a chance to recognize the virus.
Fitterman is encouraged by the range of current vaccines in trials for COVID-19, including those that use messenger RNA.
Fitterman said Huntington Hospital is prepared for a potential second wave of COVID-19. He monitors the data every day.
“We’ll see if things are starting to uptick long before it’s more obvious to the public,” Fitterman said.
As a part of Northwell Health, Huntington Hospital has stockpiled personal protective equipment. Northwell also gave Huntington $4 million to be prepared, which includes having more ventilators, dialysis machines, and negative pressure rooms ready. Huntington can handle 10% more than the number of patients who needed medical help in the spring.
“We are beyond ready [but we] hope we don’t have to exercise any of that,” Fitterman said.
Fitterman urged those people who need other hospital services, such as cancer screenings, to come to the hospital.
When the spring surge for COVID-19 occurred, the hospital told people who were dealing with nonemergency situations not to come to the hospital because they needed the beds, and not because they felt patients would be exposed to the virus.
Indeed, after the viral numbers declined, the hospital tested its staff for the presence of the antibodies. They found that 9% of the staff had antibodies to the virus, which is below the 14% for the surrounding community.
“What we did works,” Fitterman said, which included PPE and procedures to protect the staff. The hospital is a “safe place to be,” he said.
In monitoring the daily changes in infection in Suffolk County, Fitterman said positive tests have been rising and falling during the last few weeks. So far, he has not seen an increase in hospitalizations.
“Our numbers continue to go down,” Fitterman said, as the hospital had three people with COVID-19 as of Sept. 8.
Empire Subaru of Huntington has once again selected Huntington Hospital as the recipient of Subaru’s Share the Love program. The dealership donated more than $50,000 to Huntington Hospital’s award-winning neurosurgery department. This is the second year the dealership has donated to the hospital. Pictured at the check presentation on Aug. 7, from left, are Dr. Robert Kerr; Empire Subaru Sales Manager Vinny Rizzo; Vice Chair of Huntington Hospital’s board Thomas Lederer; Empire Subaru General Manager Gary Farley; and Huntington Hospital’s Executive Director Dr. Nick Fitterman.
Huntington Hospital has achieved a prestigious four-star rating from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in its annual 2020 hospital rankings, its comprehensive quality measurement report released on Jan. 30.
CMS hospital rankings of more than 4,000 Medicare-certified facilities nationwide take into account over 50 performance measures that analyze health care outcomes such as readmission rates, patient experience, safety and quality of care. CMS’ hospital rankings are considered among the best hospital report cards to help inform where to receive medical care.
Huntington Hospital’s CMS rating follows its recognition as New York State’s highest-ranked community hospital by U.S. News & World Report in its 2019-20 Best Hospital list.
“From redesigning our Center for Mothers & Babies to include all private rooms for a better patient experience to consistently setting and meeting high benchmarks for health care quality, we at Huntington Hospital take our patients’ needs to heart as we thoughtfully provide them with world-class care,” said Dr. Nick Fitterman, executive director of Huntington Hospital.
“We are always looking at ways to not only provide the necessary health care that our Suffolk County residents require, but to go above and beyond to give them the best medical care available,” he added.
Huntington Hospital nurses have received the highest nursing honor – Magnet designation – a Long Island record four times in a row.The hospital’s orthopedics program has also been consistently been ranked by the Joint Commission with the gold seal of approval for its hip and knee replacements and was among the top 1 percent nationally in orthopedics, according to U.S. News.
Huntington Hospital has also been designated as a Center of Excellence in Minimally Invasive Gynecology and a Center of Excellence in Robotic Surgery by the Surgical Review Corporation.
For more information about Huntington Hospital, go to www.huntington.northwell.edu or call 631-351-2000.
Huntington Hospital has received a two-year designation as an Antimicrobial Stewardship Center of Excellence (AS CoE) by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). The hospital is one of only 35 hospitals nationwide to receive this recognition.
More than 700,000 people die worldwide each year due to antimicrobial-resistant infections. The AS CoE program recognizes institutions that have created stewardship programs led by infectious disease (ID) physicians and ID-trained pharmacists who have achieved standards established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC core elements for antibiotic stewardship include seven major areas: leadership commitment, accountability, drug expertise, action, tracking, reporting and education.
Dr. Cynthia Ann Hoey and Dr. Adrian Popp, infectious disease specialists, worked closely with pharmacists Agnieszka Pasternakand Nina Yousefzadeh to ensure Huntington Hospital met the rigorous criteria to be recognized by the IDSA.
“We are honored to have received this prestigious IDSA recognition,” said Dr. Nick Fitterman, the hospital’s executive director. “We are committed to fighting antimicrobial resistance through our comprehensive training and educational outreach program with all of our infectious disease specialists and pharmacists. The antimicrobial stewardship program will improve patient care and preserve the integrity of current treatments for future generations.”
Pictured from left, Nina Yousefzadeh,Dr. Cynthia Ann Hoey, Agnieszka Pasternak and Dr. Nick Fitterman.
