Northwell Health moved into a new laboratory in Lake Success Monday that will host non-emergency testing for Northwell’s hospitals and the health network’s partners.
It complements another new laboratory that opened in Little Neck earlier this month, which will do microbiology testing, said Dr. Dwayne Breining, executive director of Northwell labs.
The Lake Success laboratory is in a previously unused 101,000 square-foot-space at 450 Lakeville Road, which already hosts several other Northwell facilities, including the Center for Advanced Medicine and the Monter Cancer Center.
“When we first went in there to scout the location when it was a completely unfinished space, we were able to kind of throw footballs around to each other and punt the footballs and not be able to hit the other side,” Breining said.
The new laboratory took about three years of construction and $59.6 million to complete, he said.
It includes two parallel automatic testing lines, which will allow testing to continue even if one breaks down, he said.
The company that manufactured the laboratory’s chemistry and hematology testing line told Northwell it is the largest such line it has constructed in North America and the second largest in the world, Breining said.
“That big automated line is going to allow us to do more testing much more quickly than we’ve ever been able to do it before,” Breining said. “That is undoubtedly better for patient care. The faster that you can get the tests done that need to be done, the faster you can get that info out to the clinicians.”
Automation also enables technicians to focus more on monitoring quality and accuracy, he said.
Northwell completes about 30 million tests annually, Breining said, 20 million of which are at core laboratories, or sites that perform non-urgent testing. It outgrew its old core laboratory about ten years ago, he said, but continued operating there until the two new labs were complete.
Northwell’s new laboratory in Little Neck is in partnership with NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s public health system.
It will have 210 employees, according to Northwell. Lake Success’ laboratory has about 520.
The building at 450 Lakeville Road was used for aeronautics equipment manufacturing during World War II and was later the original location of the United Nations, Breining said.
