Northwell Health has opened a $6 million radiology suite at its Long Island Jewish Medical Center that helps doctors provide more targeted cancer care for patients.
Northwell’s new interventional radiology suite, which opened at the New Hyde Park hospital on March 23, is equipped with technology that produces 3D images of a patient’s body that provides more accurate treatment of tumors, blood clots and the best placement for catheters and chemotherapy ports, the health system said.
The key feature of the 1,100-square-foot space is the $1.5 million Azurion 7 image-guided therapy system, manufactured by Phillips. The touchscreen-enabled piece of equipment can rotate on eight axes, providing accurate imaging for physicians, Northwell said.
Officials with Northwell said the multimillion-dollar suite will help physicians provide more efficient care to patients while limiting the amount of time patients are exposed to radiation during imaging.
“Interventional radiology is a way for us to treat patients in a minimally invasive way,” said Dr. Ross Wank, executive vice chair of radiology in Northwell’s central market. “The newer equipment coming out onto the market is taking the software and hardware to the next level.”
Local hospital experts said the availability of such technology, while pricey, is helping hospitals with the resources to see more patients and conduct procedures like biopsies more precisely.
The newly equipped radiology room is one of three such suites the health system has on Long Island and the fourth across all Northwell hospitals. The added suite will allow the hospital to see up to 1,200 patients a year, Northwell said.
Northwell has similarly equipped radiology suites at Huntington Hospital and Peconic Bay Medical Center. The system also has the technology at its Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
Wank said Northwell plans to upgrade its two other interventional radiology suites at LIJ and at all Northwell hospitals.
The Long Island Jewish Medical Center, a 583-bed teaching hospital, is home to the R.J. Zuckerberg Cancer Hospital, which offers surgical and emergency cancer care. Northwell facilities have 400 oncology specialists that treat more than 19,000 cancer cases each year.
“Long Island Jewish Medical Center has transformed itself into one of the nation’s leading cancer hospitals and this technology enhances the important work our physicians are doing,” Lenny Nartowicz, a Northwell senior vice president and the president of LIJ, said in a statement. “This advanced interventional radiology suite increases access to care and provides ever more precise targeting for a host of medical problems.”
Wendy Darwell, president and CEO of the Suburban Hospital Alliance of New York State, a regional trade group representing hospitals on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, said investments in such technology are part of broader trend toward “precision medicine.”
“These more sophisticated technologies allow for much less invasive procedures and much more precise targeting,” Darwell said. “When you have less invasive care, there’s less trauma to the patient’s body, recoveries are quicker and there’s less risk of infections.”
Given the significant investment in this type of technology, Darwell said hospitals with high volumes of patients or ones that specialize in certain areas of medicine are the most likely to invest in such equipment.
“If you’ve developed specialties where you are going to have high enough volume of patients to take advantage of those investments, then the business case is stronger,” she said.