North Fork Surgicenter, a joint venture of pain management specialist Dr. Frank Adipietro, gastroenterologist Dr. Dhiren Mehta and Eastern Long Island Hospital to provide ambulatory surgery services at a facility on Boisseau Avenue, got a green light from the Southold Town Planning Board Monday evening.
The facility will be located in a 5,564-square-foot building that formerly housed a Suffolk County Water Authority office at 700 Boisseau Avenue. It will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Six staff members and one physician will work there during business hours, attorney Robert Fischette of Southampton told the planning board at Monday’s work session.
“It will serve two to three patients per hour,” Fischette said.
The facility will consist of two operating rooms, one procedure room, three pre-operating bays and six post-operative bays, with support areas. There will be 16 parking spaces on the 1.2-acre site.
Responding to traffic concerns raised by neighboring residents during a July 10 public hearing on the site plan application, Frischette said the facility is “not a regular medical office where there might be an appointment every 15 minutes or so.” Procedure appointments, he said during the hearing, take an hour or two.
The site is zoned light-industrial. “In the end, it’s a developed site,” Frischette said. “Its a pretty mild use for this location.”
According to North Fork Surgicenter’s application to the New York State Department of Health, the doctors expect to perform 3,450 procedures in year one and 4,600 in year three, with Adipietro working there four days each week and Mehta one day each week.
The projections are based on the two physicians’ current caseloads, according to the application to the health department, called a certificate of need, or CON.
“The applicant indicated that all of the projected procedures will come from Eastern Long Island Hospital, and that they are more appropriately performed at a FASC [freestanding ambulatory surgical center],” a health department staff review document states.
ELIH will own a 20-percent stake in North Fork Surgicenter, with Adipietro and Mehta owning 45-percent and 30-percent respectively, according to documents on file with the state health department.
Adipietro, who is vice chairman of the ELIH board of trustees and president of the hospital’s medical staff, will serve as the center’s medical director, according to the state documents.
