After a four-month soft opening, ColumbiaDoctors unveiled its new $10 million medical center in Tarrytown on April 20, continuing the trend of major metropolitan hospitals and health systems expanding their reach in Westchester.
ColumbiaDoctors is the faculty practice of Columbia University Medical Center, one of the campuses of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
The 20,000-square-foot facility at 155 White Plains Road is in a previously vacant 70,000-square-foot building that once served as offices for typewriter manufacturer Olivetti. It”™s about a mile from the Tappan Zee Bridge and features 24 exam rooms and three consult rooms, with specialties including cardiology, neurology and psychiatry. The space also hosts imaging facilities to administer CT scans, MRIs, X-ray and ultrasound exams.
A radiology center is expected to open early this summer.
“What”™s unusual about radiology is that we will have more services under one roof than any other facility in the area, aside from a hospital,” said Kristin O”™Meara, faculty liaison and patient access manager for ColumbiaDoctors.
The space is the largest of the 13 ColumbiaDoctors locations in Westchester, including its facilities in Briarcliff Manor, Buchanan, Croton-on-Hudson, Eastchester, Hartsdale, Hawthorne, Ossining, Pleasantville, Scarsdale, Sleepy Hollow, Somers and White Plains.
Practice administrator Nancy Objay said during a recent tour of the facility that compared with a hospital, the Tarrytown medical center is a “more pleasurable experience for a patient.”
The location allows patients access to “the physicians that you”™d normally have to trek down to the city (to see), you”™re getting them right here, close to home,” she said, adding that free parking is also a perk.
Most of the doctors will take appointments one to two days per week in the Tarrytown location.
Along with conducting their own research, physicians of ColumbiaDoctors also serve as teachers.
“They”™re the people who write the book, which is another key advantage over some of our competitors ”¦ they”™re teaching students how to do this and they”™re writing and doing the research that informs treatments,” O”™Meara said.
One such doctor is Christopher S. Ahmad, a professor of orthopedic surgery and an attending physician at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. He also serves as the head team physician for the New York Yankees.
“The need existed and we responded to that need,” Ahmad said of the Tarrytown location. “People wanted to have the New York City specialists.”
“Now you can get the same doctors right here in Westchester,” he said.
Anna-Christina Bevelaqua, an assistant professor in rehabilitation medicine at Columbia, agreed that the new offices will make patients”™ lives easier.
“I think it”™s really convenient for a lot of our patients who before were traveling all the way to the city, into Washington Heights to the main hospital,” she said. “This just makes it so much more convenient for them.”
“I”™m seeing an orthopedic surgeon as a patient today who lives in Westchester and prefers to see me here than at the medical center,” Ahmad said. “And he works at the medical center.”
The Tarrytown office is primarily a clinical location, as opposed to a major teaching site or surgery facility. Many of its doctors perform surgeries at NewYork-Presbyterian/Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, a facility that is set to open the doors of a $60 million surgery and oncology pavilion later this year.
“It”™s really about the community setting,” O”™Meara said, “for older patients especially.”
NewYork-Presbyterian also plans to lease space at the Tarrytown location for general practitioner offices.
There are also plans to expand the medical center”™s offerings to include internal medicine and pediatric subspecialty practices, as well as installing a physical therapy gym at the location in the “foreseeable future,” O”™Meara said.
