A new emergency department is set to open later this spring on the East End – alleviating an inconvenience for residents who had to battle summer traffic to receive emergency care.

With the cutting of the ceremonial ribbon, hospital leaders announced that the state-of-the-art 22,000-square-foot facility emergency department will bring vital emergency health care services to residents and visitors in the eastern-most areas of the South Fork.

Located on Pantigo Place, the new facility is an off-campus extension of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Emergency Department. It is one of only a few free-standing emergency departments in the state.

“It absolutely can be a lifesaver. We have high quality care here…and we have amazing medical personnel who can save lives right in this building,” said Carol Gomes, Stony Brook University Hospital’s CEO and COO.

Some of its features include a dedicated resuscitation room, cardiac monitoring capabilities in the exam rooms, fast-track treatment rooms, two isolation rooms, comprehensive imaging services such as CT and MRI, an on-site ambulance and eco-friendly innovations.

“We have obstetrics and gynecology rooms. We’ll have pediatric capabilities and…we have the ambulance bay, which leads to a full resuscitation room, so really everything can be taken care of here,” said William Wertheim, Stony Brook Medicine’s executive vice president.

Town officials said that there has been a great need for this facility in this area.

“If you look at the census from 2010 to 2020, our year-round population increased 32%. That doesn’t even account for what happens in the summer where we believe our population triples or quadruples. We have one way in and one way out; traffic is backed up particularly in the summer months. So, it’s extraordinary now that we have this facility here that folks don’t have to get in that parade of cars to get to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital,” said Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, supervisor of East Hampton Town.

The new facility was made possible through a $10 million New York state grant and a $30 million fundraising campaign, with support from several donors.