Peconic Bay Medical Center to offer healthcare to veterans at its Manorville campus

Veterans on the East End will no longer have to travel upwards of 50 miles to get access to medical care.

Peconic Bay Medical Center announced at a press conference today that, with the help of Congressman Lee Zeldin, its Manorville campus will now offer a variety of healthcare services to veterans through the United States Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system.

Those services include primary care, disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illnesses, and patient education and counseling. Veterans will also have access to the facility’s speciality services, including rheumatology, gastroenterology, colon and rectal surgery, general surgery, orthopedic trauma and metabolic bone disease.

“This is a great day for the veterans who live on the East End of Long Island,” Riverhead Town Councilman John Dunleavy, a Navy veteran himself, said at the press conference today.

Until now, East End veterans enrolled in the Veterans Affairs healthcare system would need to trek to Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, which is an hour and a half’s drive from the North Fork’s easternmost town, Orient.

“It’s been a long wait for the veterans on the East End that have to travel to Northport for all their major surgeries and doctors appointments,” said Dunleavy. “Now they can just come here to Manorville.”

Manorville’s Gertrude and Louis Feil Campus for Ambulatory Care will serve as a “home base” for East End veterans’ healthcare, Zeldin explained. Services that aren’t offered at the Manorville campus will be available to veterans at Peconic Bay’s main campus on Roanoke Avenue in Riverhead, and services beyond that, such as psychiatric care, will still require them to make the trip to Northport.

“I remember taking my father to Northport, and let me tell you, it was a long trip from Montauk,” said Suffolk County legislator Jay Schneiderman. “We’ve made more intake services available in the County Center in Riverhead, but nothing on the scale of what we’re talking about today.”

Veterans will be able to begin receiving care in Manorville as soon as tomorrow, Zeldin said. “They can pick up their phones tomorrow morning and make an appointment,” he said.

There will be no additional federal cost for veterans to get their services at Peconic Bay, he added.

“This was an issue I’ve been aware of for a long time,” Zledin said. “When I was running for Congress in 2008, people were talking about the inconvenience of having to travel all the way to Northport from the East End of Long Island. It was very high on my priority list.”

Immediately upon taking office, the congressman said, he initiated a dialogue with Peconic Bay to make its healthcare services available to veterans.

“The stars were aligned for this issue,” he said. “Sometimes things take a long time to get underway. This was one effort that came together perfectly and quickly.”

The PBMC Gertrude and Louis Feil Campus for Ambulatory Care, which first began operating in 2013, is open seven days a week. The campus is located at 496 Route 111 in Manorville. A full list of its services is available here.