By Naeisha Rose
Queens Hospital Center is expecting over $1 million in state-of-the-art equipment from a capital projects request it made to Borough President Melinda Katz and members of the Queens City Council delegation. The hospital wants to use the money to better service its growing patient population and their needs.
Over 80 attendees went to a Legislative Breakfast that was held in Jamaica Hills at the hospital to learn about the $1.197 million capital projects request that will be split into the next fiscal year budget by the borough president and members of the Queens City Council delegation.
The first request was for Katz to allocate $1 million towards an upgraded mammography suite for the hospital’s cancer center that will incorporate a 3D Mammography unit, which is superior to the 2D unit and has better diagnostic accuracy, cancer detection and less false positive recall rates for women and especially women with dense breasts, according to NYC Health + Hospitals Queens.
A request was made to the Queens delegation to allocate $65,000 for ophthalmology equipment and $132,000 for urology equipment.
The ophthalmology wing of the hospital will receive a Zeiss IOL Master 700 with a camera and table, a device that will determine exact eye measurements upon cataract removal and intraocular lens installation, according tot the hospital. The IOL Master 700 can use a scanning laser to measure the eye in multiple dimensions, which has resulted in patient satisfaction, but the hospital’s current IOL machine is unusable.
The urology wing will be using the Lumenis Pulse 100H Holmium Laser, a device that is used to treat enlarged prostate glands with urologic stones that are either in the bladder or kidney, according to NYC Health. The laser breaks up the stones into smaller pieces for the patient to pass them, therefore eliminating the need for an extensive surgery.
The purpose of the three pieces of equipment is to provide more efficient care for the growing hospital, which is undergoing an expansion to an emergency room that has seen a 50 percent increase in patient volume.
The ER will be completed in the fall and will be expanded by 6,500 square feet to accommodate new exam rooms, isolation rooms, triage rooms and nurses stations.
At the breakfast, the hospital also announced that it would include an image-guided radiation therapy machine, which will be in by April. The IGRT precisely targets the radiation dose used to treat tumors in areas of the body that move, such as the lungs. Since it is non-surgical, patients are able to maintain their healthy tissue, unlike with traditional therapy.
This year’s breakfast was attended by City Council members Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica) and Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest).
Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose
