Hospital takes on new name

Despite operating under a new name, Forest Hills Hospital, formerly North Shore University Hospital at Forest Hills, is still a community hospital dedicated to providing quality healthcare.
Currently owned and operated by the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, Forest Hills Hospital, originally built nearly 50 years ago, opened as Forest Hills General Hospital and underwent several name and administrative changes throughout the years.
“It was named LaGuardia Hospital when it was owned by Health Insurance Plan (HIP),” said Theodore Lehmann, Director of Community Services for Forest Hills Hospital. “Then North Shore bought it in 1996 or 1997, before North Shore and Long Island Jewish (LIJ) merged. Today, it’s closer to its original name, although it’s a very different institution.”
That difference can be seen in the expanding services offered at Forest Hills Hospital.
An approved community cancer hospital (one of only a few in the country), the facility offers in-patient and ambulatory surgeries, as well as in-home care for house-bound patients.
They also have a New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) Prenatal Care and Assistance Program (PCAP) that offers free prenatal care for expectant mothers on Medicaid, and they partner with the American Cancer Society to provide free screenings (including mammograms and pap smears) to uninsured women.
Also on site is a team of reproductive medical specialists, specially-trained neo-natologists, and a State Health Department Level 2 nursery that treats high-risk infants.
“We are the Queens entree into the North Shore-LIJ Health System,” Lehmann told The Queens Courier. “We provide high quality routine procedures with rather sophisticated treatments.”
Those “rather sophisticated treatments” include bariatric surgery for weight control, a chronic pain management program, a joint replacement center, and vascular surgery (they were among the first to perform carotid artery stenting).
And the list keeps growing. In the future, Forest Hills Hospital will develop its department of orthopedics as a center of excellence and will launch its digestive diseases center.
Forest Hills Hospital is located at 102-01 66th Road in Forest Hills. To learn more, call (718) 830-4000, or visit www.northshorelij.com.