Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces $27.5 Million to Expand Maternal and Pediatric Health Care at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens

Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces $27.5 Million to Expand Maternal and Pediatric Health Care at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced New York State will invest $27.5 million to expand maternal and pediatric health care facilities at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. The State's investment will increase access to high-quality prenatal and mental health care by expanding the hospital's Women's Pavilion to more than double its current size. This investment will also enable the hospital to build a new, state-of-the-art Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), which will allow more local families to access care for critically ill and injured children without traveling miles away to other hospitals.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good afternoon, everyone. Great to see my friends here. We've been in Queens all day long since early morning. You do have some incredible diners and visited a lot of your businesses and met some of our business owners and it's always so great to reconnect. And I've spent a lot of time here as Lieutenant Governor, I remember the Borough President at the time, your predecessor, once said, "Are you sure you're not running against me? You're spending so much time in Queens." But I do love this borough. It is such a fascinating, diverse, exciting - a vital place.

And this hospital, which had images splashed all over the nation and the world during the pandemic as truly the epicenter of the pandemic - we've come a long way in healing. We are now saying that we may have been the epicenter of the pandemic, but now we're the epicenter of women's health. And that's what we're going to continue doing, is focusing on areas that we can make a huge difference. Turn the page. Heal the scars, as the CEO Helen had told me as well.

And so, I want to thank everyone who is part of that really long journey to get us here today. But now there's no looking back. I am so optimistic about the future of this hospital. And Elmhurst hospital is a level 3 perinatal center. That means very simply, it is an absolutely critical provider of health for women and babies who require complex care. Thousands of families here depend on this hospital every single day. And what we want to do is make sure we deliver little bundles of joy instead of tears of anguish.

The doctors and nurses here are second to none. They do extraordinary work. I just had a chance to thank a couple of them in the hallway and they're just so energetic and you can feel a real positive energy about this place. You don't always feel that. That is special.

Everyone's working truly hard, but this building, built many decades ago, is just not kept up, right? It's just not giving you what you need. So, let me describe what happens here on the ground. You know this, but if an expectant mother visits the women's pavilion and there's a problem, she needs to get to labor and delivery.

Okay, where's she going to go? She's going to get rushed downstairs, put in an ambulance, driven around the corner to an emergency room, then go up to the labor and delivery unit. Now, I'm probably the only Governor who could speak in a firsthand way about this, but when you're about to have a baby, you do not want to be going up and down stairs trying to find an ambulance and driving around. Every second matters. Every second counts. And it's incredibly stressful and scary for everyone involved in that scenario - think about that. The moms to be, the families and the staff, everybody's just stressed out.

So, I want to acknowledge some people who understand this challenge, why we're here today, who brought this to me directly. And our great CEO, Helen, you have been such a champion, such a fighter, but such a positive force of energy in this place, inspiring so many others. Helen - I want to thank you - Arteaga Landaverde. I want to thank her for all she has done. She makes sure we know what she needs, right? And that's alright.

Also, Donovan Richards. Again, we have become deep friends for over a decade now. And to see you in action, the passion that you have toward the people of this borough is just so contagious. And it's so uplifting to see elected officials who understand the power they have to make a difference in people's lives, and you do that every single day. Ladies and gentlemen, our Borough President. Let's thank him as well.

We have some great representatives in Albany as well. These are the people I work with. We roll up our sleeves. We get the job done. And Assemblymember Steve Raga is here. I want to thank Catalina Cruz, our Assemblymember here as well. Great champions of this area, both of you. I thank you for your service.

And we have a number of our Council Members here, but also our cabinet member, James McDonald. Dr. McDonald, are you here? There you are, Dr. McDonald. He is the head of the New York State Department of Health. Let's give him a round of applause.

So, because I heard from all of them, we're here today to announce a landmark $27.5 million investment to expand prenatal services, doubling the size of the Women's Health Pavilion. Finally, building a brand-new state-of-the-art pediatric intensive care unit and construct that is long overdue. Overdue is a word you hear in this place a lot, isn't it? - long overdue connecting the passageway to the fifth-floor delivery suite. This is what we're going to accomplish, and I want to thank everyone who helped make it happen.

This will also help - not just the people who come here, our patients, the workers, people involved in this entire health care ecosystem, which is just extraordinary - but also the neighbors. This will help the moms and the children in the neighborhood right here, where they live. They know they can get this service. And you know what? When you invest in a building like this that has been here a long time, people just take it for granted. They think it's always going to be this way.

When you build new services, a new pavilion and you make those changes, it starts to change the psychology of people. I've seen this all over. You start putting up new buildings, you start making a difference, you start investing in facilities, and people realize, "You know what, it's not happening somewhere else. It's happening right in my neighborhood. We must be important enough to have this" and that's important to me as Governor because I want people to have a positive, upbeat feeling about their communities, their neighborhoods and what their government can do for them.

So, this is how we start changing people's attitudes. And it's also not just about getting access to the new PICU. It's the children who'll get care in this community. Now, I'm all about kids. There's not a single child I've ever encountered in the entire State of New York that I have not reached over and tried to hug. I gravitate towards children. It's just innate in me. And now I have a little two-year-old granddaughter. I FaceTime her every day. She doesn't live around here, but I do get the chance to see her. So, when I think about little faces like that and how innocent they are and how we have to provide better care for them - starting before they're born, okay, let's give them the best shot in life.

We have to have more services for moms, we have to have programs in the evening, and this is all from the community, the women in the community. They're saying what they need, and we can provide this.

And also, once the kids come, we need to make sure that they have every best shot in life. And that's why just this summer, my administration has announced over $500 million in investments and support for New York families with children. And that is what we're going to continue, that is extraordinary.

It's personal. So, we've invested this money, we're investing in making sure that more women survive pregnancy. And I've heard from too many that say, "Getting pregnant, if you're a woman of color, can be a death sentence." We did a lot of events on this. We had a very aggressive program in our State of the State address to talk about what we can do to reduce the horrifically high numbers of maternal and infant mortality here in the State of New York.

Our numbers are disgraceful in this country compared to other countries. And I'm not going to tolerate that any longer, because everyone deserves the best shot in life. And so, when you know that Black women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth, you have to peel back and say, "What is going on here? What is causing this?"

And what I want to do is find every way possible to support these moms, get them through this, and to even have programs like the first state in the nation to offer paid leave for prenatal visits. Nobody else is doing that.

This way we make sure that there's not a reason for a low wage mom who has to leave her job and perhaps find child care for other kids to go to those essential appointments. They're more likely to skip those appointments if they're not being paid for that time. They're going to be paid for that time. That is the law in New York State. It starts in January, and you heard it here first in your state. So I'm really proud of our Legislature for helping accomplish this as well.

Also, Elmhurst was one of the very first to receive funding for our Abortion Provider Support Fund back in 2022, around the time of the Dobbs decision. We talked about how more people are going to need support here. Every woman in the State of New York needs to have the right to choose, but also those have to seek shelter and seek a safe harbor here in New York. Make sure they do not have to ever go to another state, this is the place they'll be able to secure those services.

We also cover Medicaid coverage for doula services, this is another way we can promote safer, lower stress bursts and a transition for parents. This is incredible.

And as I just said I met some of our nurses here and thanked them. And I said we have to make sure that our workforce knows they're valued, especially those who came through the pandemic. But we also want to keep retention numbers.

We don't want to have to always be looking for more employees. It is a real challenge for our institutions. What a different world it is - when I was growing up, everybody wanted to be a nurse or a teacher - that's what women did. There were plenty of people who wanted to be in these really essential jobs, and now we have fewer people looking for them and higher needs among our patients.

We're investing in our health care program, that's why it launched in 2022 - a program to provide $2 billion, $2 billion to put directly in the pockets of 800,000 health care workers who were the front line workers. I know many of them right here. And I know I was just getting some hugs in the hallway. They're very grateful that we could do this for them.

So, challenges, you can have a beautiful hospital, you can have beautiful new facilities, new wards - but if you don't have incredible people to work in it, then it doesn't matter at all. We're going to continue making a difference.

And as a result of all these efforts, what we're doing right here in Queens, right here at Elmhurst - truly making a difference in the lives and others. I feel really proud. This is a proud day for me to be able to come here and look at all of you. The ones who live and breathe this place, because you're so dedicated to the best outcomes for your patients.

You know why? You're in this profession because you care. The bottom line, you could have done anything with your lives. Everyone is sitting here because you care so deeply - and I want to thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all you do for all of us.

I think I missed a couple of our Council Members who are here. Shekar Krishnan, Council Member Krishnan is here as well. I want to thank you. Lynn Schulman has joined us as well, Council Member.

And again, I have the best team, but you are so blessed here to have the most amazing CEO I've ever run into. She's a hugger. She's the kind of person I go to. Helen, I want to invite you up here.

Contact the Governor's Press Office