Lutheran expected to merge fully with NYU by November 2016

After announcing plans to move toward a full-asset merger early last month, Lutheran Medical Center (LMC) and NYU Langone have finalized their partnership in what will culminate in LMC becoming the Brooklyn Campus of NYU as of November 1, 2016.

President and CEO of Lutheran Medical Center Wendy Goldstein took to the front of the room at a Community Board 11 meeting on Thursday, September 10, to present the hospital’s plans to community members and discuss reasons for the merger along with future plans.

“When you feel something is right, it’s just right,” said Goldstein about the merger. “It is very exciting news.”

According to Goldstein, the move comes after last April’s formal affiliation between the two hospitals.

“The affiliation was supposed to be a five-year thing that would turn into a merger,” Goldstein explained, “but, after five weeks, the dean came to me and said ‘We’re all in anyway. We have already spent $190 million at Lutheran to build the services, so we’re not backing out of this. We might as well just merge.’”

The merger will bring with it an update of Lutheran’s information systems, as well as cohesiveness across hospitals in terms of accessing patient information, and will open the floor for what the Brooklyn community really needs, according to Goldstein.

“I’m very, very proud of what we’ve done,” she added . “We’ve identified transitional projects. We need a larger emergency room, we want to build pediatrics and psychiatry, and really have a comprehensive system and one ambulatory surgery center.

“We went through these various things,” she continued, “topped off by the fact that they offered to give us a total replacement of all our information systems. What they’re committed to is that by September 2016, all of Lutheran will be totally integrated with the NYU systems so that every record, whether you’re seen at University up on 34th Street, Manhattan or in Brooklyn, will all be accessible to the doctors.”

According to Goldstein, NYU is committed to making the transition a “seamless” process. The hospital has already put all of Lutheran’s faculty and medical staff under its own auspices.

“Lutheran doctors are now NYU doctors and they’re rolling out a plan that is enormously exciting,” said Goldstein. “Brooklyn has always been important for NYU and they feel, and I feel, that this is sort of the cherry on the cake. What we’re going to do is work together to provide the services that the community needs.”

 

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