Bethpage — New Island Hospital, a 203-bed community hospital here, announced this week it has joined Catholic Health Services (CHS) of Long Island.

“For some time, the New Island Board of Directors sought to align the hospital with a system that would recognize our obligation to meet the needs of the community,” said Jack Howlett, chairman of New Island’s board. CHS “supports New Island’s mission to deliver quality health care and remain a community-based hospital.”

“Our mission is to provide great health care with compassion,” said Dr. Aaron E. Glatt, New Island’s president and chief executive officer. “Patients can often be treated better in their friendly community hospital, with the same high tech equipment, but in a much more comfortable environment.

“CHS is committed to enhancing our viability, as it would any member of its organization,” Glatt said. As a member of CHS, New Island can avail itself of all the economies of scale and other advantages enjoyed by CHS member institutions.
Over the past few years, New Island Hospital has achieved financial stability while improving the quality of care, renovating and modernizing, and even adding many new successful clinical services and programs.

CHS President and CEO James Harden welcomed New Island. “As a native of Levittown with family still in the area, I have visited New Island over the years and recognize firsthand the importance of having a vibrant and viable hospital in the area.

“Our Catholic health system is committed to continuing and expanding the important medical services provided by New Island to the surrounding communities that depend upon it for care,” Harden said. Acquiring New Island also gives CHS access to an area of Long Island where it previously had no presence.

Once known as Mid-Island Hospital, New Island offers comprehensive inpatient medical, critical care, and surgical services. Its emergency department treats more than 37,000 patients a year. Other services include ambulatory surgery, a center for sleep medicine, hyperbaric medicine and wound healing, a balance center, an endoscopy unit, and a full scope of outpatient radiology services.

CHS consists of five Catholic hospitals, three nursing homes, a regional home care and hospice network, and a community-based agency for persons with special needs — all on Long Island.