Coney Island Hospital will get to replace its aging ultrasound equipment after a $2 million cash infusion allocated by the feds.
The public hospital in southern Brooklyn will also put money towards modernizing its “digital care” strategy after the budget allocation by US Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, even though Coney Island Hospital, which is actually in Sheepshead Bay, has been drawn out of her congressional district for the upcoming midterm elections.
“It really is a tremendous hospital and it is the public hospital for southern Brooklyn,” Malliotakis said while visiting the hospital on Monday. “So I’m really happy to be able to work with my colleagues in a bipartisan fashion and get the appropriations committee to approve this earmark of $2 million to make sure that we can make those necessary improvements.”
The new ultrasound equipment promises dramatically increased imaging quality.
“We’ve gone from a flip phone, which does its job, to a smartphone,” said Dr. Carlos Forcade, chairman of the hospital’s radiology department. “That’s the best way I can put it.”
The hospital is currently undergoing a transformation expected to be completed this fall, which will see the construction of a new 11-story hospital building and the renaming of the medical center after the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who grew up in Midwood and stands as one of southern Brooklyn’s proudest daughters. Overall, the campus is being rebranded as South Brooklyn Health, acknowledging the hospital’s role as the primary public health facility for the southern part of the borough, rather than just for Coney Island.
The upgraded ultrasound equipment is part of the concurrent modernization campaign the hospital is undertaking as it takes on a new name and new facilities.
“We want to make sure that our patients are getting state of the art care not only in the medical devices but in how they’re interacting with our system and with our facility,” said Coney Island Hospital CEO Svetlana Lipyanskaya. “Because our patients here should get exactly the same care as they would at any private facility.”
Additional reporting by Paul Frangipane
