As more and more New Yorkers show up at emergency rooms across the city with a broad spectrum of medical issues, hospitals are bucking a decades-long trend of closures and service cuts by expanding their ERs, building off-campus emergency departments, adding beds and boosting staffing. Hospitals citywide experienced a 6.5 percent increase in ER visits during the first quarter of this year compared to the same time last year, according to data collected by the Greater New York Hospital Association and shared with POLITICO. The higher-than-expected increase appears linked to the impact of people delaying care due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the mounting acute medical needs of an aging population and the unabating opioid epidemic. The result: Emergency departments are crowded with patients who require more complex care. The ER at NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi in the Bronx, for instance, notched its busiest month on record in July, a doctor there said in a recent radio interview. Maimonides Health’s new emergency department in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has blown past its projections for patient visits by 15 to 20 percent, clinical leaders told POLITICO. Patients across the city are also waiting slightly longer in the ER for an available hospital bed — over 26 hours, on average, compared to just under 25 hours last year, per state data provided to POLITICO. “What New York City is telling us is they need more health care,” Eric Wei, senior vice president and chief quality officer for NYC Health + Hospitals, said in an interview. While hospitals across the city are feeling the strain, emergency departments in lower Manhattan have also been dealing with the impact of Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s gradual downsizing since its closure was announced in 2023. Late last year, NYU Langone Medical Center in Kips Bay started seeing a “notable increase” in patients from the area served by Beth Israel, spokesperson Steve Ritea said. The hospital has since boosted nurse staffing in the ER by 18 percent. And volume has only continued to rise. Close neighbor Bellevue Hospital recently inked a $7.8 million, 12-year lease to relocate its federally-funded health center for 9/11 survivors, so it can make room for an undetermined number of additional beds. And Mount Sinai has committed $28 million to help Bellevue, which is seeing some of the highest patient volume in its history, expand its emergency department as a condition of state approval to close Beth Israel. Across town, in Manhattan’s West Village, Northwell Lenox Health Greenwich Village enlisted additional per diem staffers to fortify itself in the event that Beth Israel’s closure causes volume to explode. Visits to the freestanding emergency department were already up 7 percent in the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2023, according to Tucker Woods, the facility’s associate medical director. “The Beth Israel situation is 100 percent playing a role,” Woods said. “That’s a big jump.” Meanwhile, the BronxCare Health System, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian are among the facilities making moves to increase capacity and ease ER overcrowding. IN OTHER NEWS: — Health insurance premiums for state-regulated individual commercial plans will increase by an average of 12.7 percent next year, while premiums for small group plans will go up by an average of 8.4 percent, the state Department of Financial Services announced Friday. Insurers had originally requested average increases of 16.6 percent for individual plans, which cover approximately 260,000 New Yorkers and 18.6 percent for small group plans, which cover 700,000 New Yorkers working for employers with up to 100 workers. Eric Linzer, president and CEO of the New York Health Plan Association, said insurers’ requested rate hikes reflected significant price increases demanded by hospitals and other health care providers, rising prescription drug prices, taxes and government-mandated benefits. “Unfortunately, the final approved rates fail to fully recognize these factors or account for the premium reductions the State has imposed the last several years,” he said in a statement. — NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County is launching a $1.2 million cardio-obstetric program designed to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity by targeting heart disease during and after pregnancy, the municipal health system said last week. The program is funded in part by the poverty-fighting nonprofit Robin Hood. The pilot program will be staffed by obstetricians, cardiologists, anesthesiologists, nurses, emergency department physicians and other specialists, in addition to non-clinical staff in pediatrics and the emergency department. Two Brooklyn community-based organizations, Caribbean Women’s Health Association and Life of Hope, will conduct community outreach around the issue and refer potential patients to the program. — The state Department of Health announced $432,000 in funding for three Diversity in Medicine programs at Norton College of Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University. The money will support university programs for public health master’s students, medical students and medical technology master’s students. ON THE AGENDA: — Friday, 2 to 4 p.m. The New York State Council on Human Blood and Transfusion Services meets. GOT TIPS? 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