A Bright Future

In the last of three virtual conversations sponsored by The Express News Group, on Thursday, November 10, the top officials from the three East End hospitals were among the panelists looking into the future of health care in the region — and seeing bright skies.

It’s important to underscore, once again, how remarkable that is, considering where the region stood early in the new century. Hospitals were struggling to balance their books, and patients were seeing fewer and fewer doctors’ offices. The mental health infrastructure was dangerously inadequate. Even maternity departments were struggling with rising insurance costs.

Today, as the three-part series trumpeted again and again, there are more players in the game — Weill Cornell Medicine and NYU Langone Health now join Northwell Health and Stony Brook Medicine with a solid presence on the East End. The local investment is significant: Stony Brook is poised to add both an East Hampton emergency facility and, in the coming decade, a $300 million new hospital to replace Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. All of the health care systems are expanding and adding offices, and high-tech options for treatment and diagnosis that were once a long car, train or Jitney trip away.

Moreover, the expansion of telemedicine, innovative new technologies that allow health monitoring from home, and computerized conferencing that gives an outpost like the East End access to brilliant diagnosticians — it all removes the isolation that used to define the health care industry here. In 2022, it’s a different world, with a bright future. With so many trends moving in the opposite direction, it’s something to celebrate: Health care is getting better and better here.