Hospitals crowd Upper East Side

A number of large medical institutions on the Upper East Side have increased their footprints recently, DNAinfo reported. The latest, a new 16-story Memorial Sloan-Kettering facility proposed for York Avenue, has neighbors annoyed.

The building would add 179,000 square feet of outpatient services space for the cancer hospital, which is nearby along York Avenue. As medical institutions in New York City modernize and adapt to new healthcare policies, they may find themselves some of the city’s largest and most important real estate clients.

NYU Langone Medical Center is building an 800,000-square-foot pavilion on East 34th Street, the Hospital for Special Surgery has added five new floors on top of its eight-story building on East 70th Street, and Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Institute on East 64th Street is undergoing renovation, DNAinfo said.

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“There is definitely a medical arms race in New York City,” Tony Kovner, a professor of health policy and management at New York University, told DNAinfo. “A lot of the facilities are outdated. It’s the biggest thing not only for New York’s economy but also in real estate.”

And some argue that Manhattan already had too many hospitals. “Just like people eat when they’re not hungry, people get medical care when they shouldn’t have it,” Kovner said. [DNAinfo]