'Medical Arms Race' Spurs Massive Health Development on East Side

DNAinfo.com—January 16, 2012   

At a time when the city’s public hospitals are struggling and Brooklyn hospitals are facing possible closures, top-tier East Side institutions, including Hospital for Special Surgery, could dramatically reshape the city's landscape over the next five years as they expand their footprints, modernize and adapt to upcoming health care reforms.

Some projects are changing the faces of existing hospitals.

Hospital for Special Surgery has added five new floors on top of its eight story building on East 70th Street.

Other projects are in the works, with East Side hospitals gobbling up land.

For many local hospitals, the push to build facilities for outpatient, or ambulatory, services — medical procedures that can be done without an overnight stay — is an attempt to cut the costs of overnight stays as new health care laws will require.

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