Elmhurst Hospital Center (EHC), also known as NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, is a 545-bed public hospital in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens in New York City. It is one of the 11 acute care hospitals of NYC Health + Hospitals, a public benefit corporation of the city.
The current structure opened in 1957, assuming the operations of the former City Hospital, founded in 1832 on Roosevelt Island. It was renovated in the 1990s. Elmhurst Hospital Center has frequently suffered from equipment shortages because of its small capacity relative to its catchment area, which includes nearly a million people in northwestern Queens. This led to several incidents, including in March 2020 when Elmhurst Hospital became the "center of the center" of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York state, itself an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Description
The Elmhurst Hospital Center has 545 beds and occupies a triangular block bounded by Broadway to the southwest, Baxter Avenue to the southeast, and 41st Avenue on the north. Previously, it contained 600 beds, most in clusters of up to six rooms that each shared a single bathroom. There are two wings: the "A" wing running northeast on Baxter Avenue and the "B" wing running northwest on Broadway.
The parking garage to the west of the main hospital contains 600 spaces and was opened in 1993 at a cost of $13 million. When completed, it was privately owned, unlike the garages at most public hospitals in New York City. This is because Ridgemont Parking Structures, the original contractor, planned to turn ownership over to the city when the garage was completed; when Ridgemont went bankrupt, the parking structure was completed by private investors.
The bus route runs along Broadway on the southwest side of the hospital. The closest New York City Subway stations are the Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street station and the Elmhurst Avenue station.
Service area
Elmhurst Hospital, located in Northwest Queens, predominantly serves neighborhoods in northwest, west-central, and western Queens, mostly the area west of Interstate 678 and north of Atlantic Avenue, except for Middle Village, Rego Park, Forest Hills, and Kew Gardens. The areas served by Elmhurst Hospital include Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Corona, East Elmhurst, Maspeth, Glendale, Ridgewood, Woodhaven, and Richmond Hill, as well as part of downtown Flushing. As of 2016, over 59 percent of the catchment area identifies as Hispanic or Latino. Of the remainder, 19 percent identifies as Asian or Pacific Islander, 11 percent identifies as White, 8 percent identifies as Black, and 3 percent identify as some other race. Much of the population is foreign-born and low income.
History
The hospital traces its history back to City Hospital, an institution founded in 1832 on present-day Roosevelt Island. City Hospital was the second-oldest public hospital in the city and primarily served the poor. It stopped operating in 1957 but remains standing.
20th century
The City Hospital facility was relocated to the Elmhurst neighborhood of northwestern Queens in 1957, and renamed Elmhurst Hospital. The hospital initially was known as the Elmhurst General Hospital when it opened on March 18, 1957. The opening of the psychiatric ward was delayed due to a lack of staff. At the time of Elmhurst Hospital's opening, there was a shortage of ambulances across Queens, so in June 1957, two ambulances were delivered to the hospital for its emergency service. The two emergency-service ambulances started operating in August 1957, and a third ambulance was set to be activated later that year, when the hospital's psychiatric ward was scheduled to open. The psychiatric ward did not open until April 1958, and even then, most psychiatric patients in Elmhurst Hospital's catchment area were initially sent to Kings County Hospital Center because of limited capacity at Elmhurst Hospital. In the first three months of operation, Elmhurst Hospital's psychiatric ward served only 64 patients, who were housed in two wards with 12 beds each.