NYC Health + Hospitals | Elmhurst Master Plan

Elmhurst Hospital serves more than one million people in Queens as a 545-bed Level 1 trauma center with more than 100,000 emergency visits and 660,000 ambulatory visits each year. Over time, the landlocked campus had expanded incrementally to meet community need, creating operational challenges, constrained adjacencies, and limited space for future growth.

‍

Array began with a strategic market assessment to understand how projected population growth would affect inpatient, outpatient, and service-line demand. The team combined those forecasts with baseline volumes, historical trends, and the impacts of COVID-19 to develop 10-year volume projections and determine future bed needs by type.

‍

At the same time, Array completed an architectural assessment to identify infrastructure risks, exterior envelope needs, and pain points within the existing facility. Together, these analyses confirmed the need for a new tower that could expand capacity, improve connections, and create opportunities to reorganize care platforms across the campus.

‍

After evaluating acute care and behavioral health tower options, Elmhurst selected a hybrid strategy centered on a new mental health center of excellence. The plan right-sizes emergency and CPEP services, improves relationships between emergency, critical care, and step-down platforms, and creates future space for inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services.

‍

The long-term master plan also identifies a future ambulatory tower on the site of the current emergency department once those services relocate. This phased strategy allows Elmhurst to respond to immediate infrastructure and capacity needs while creating a flexible framework for growth, community health, and state-of-the-art care.