Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center

Milstein Hospital is NewYork-Presbyterian’s main inpatient facility. When it opened in 1988, its operating rooms were state-of-the-art, and over the years they have become some of the busiest in the U.S. More than 100 operations may be performed in its 26-room surgical suite in the course of a day.

Surgery and patient care have evolved at light speed since the building opened, thanks in part to new techniques developed in this hospital. Diagnostics machines and complex surgical procedures that would have been considered science fiction when the building opened are common today and continue to advance rapidly.

But to keep leading the way, Milstein needed new kinds of spaces — for example, hybrid operating rooms that could quickly change from noninvasive to invasive surgery if a patient had problems in the midst of a seemingly routine procedure.

The site of the new Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center was carved out of a schist outcropping so large it was considered unusable until the real estate became too valuable to ignore. The addition fills a void between Milstein Hospital and the Herbert Irving Pavilion, an early 1960s vintage medical office building.

Patients and visitors can gain access to the Heart Center via its entrance on a side street, which is somewhat private and gives the center its own identity, or they can enter by way of Milstein Hospital’s more public main lobby (considered the addition’s first level) and through a compact but beautifully daylit four-story atrium. It is spanned by bridges on three levels, connecting Irving to Milstein.

The new facility packs a tremendous amount into a small space. A conference center with prefunction space, an auditorium and four meeting rooms, is located on the first level. Labs and radiology occupy the level below the conference center, and a cath lab is located on level two. Eight new operating rooms have been added on the third level, and diagnostics, such as echocardiograms, are performed on level four. On level five, 20 ICU rooms have been added. Functions on all these floors have been seamlessly integrated into the existing hospital, while its circulation was improved.