SNCH holds gala Carnation Ball

The guests were resplendent, the food plentiful and delicious and the mood festive as staff and supporters of South Nassau Communities Hospital joined to raise funds and honor their own. The annual Carnation Ball was held on Nov. 7 at Crest Hollow Country Club, this year in support of the Emergency Department Expansion Campaign.

Former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato called honoree Bruce Ratner, executive chairman of Forest City Ratner Co. a visionary for his work on the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the redevelopment of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum site.

The hospital also named Dr. Joshua Kugler, South Nassau’s chair of the department of emergency medicine, as this year’s recipient of the Mary Pearson Award.  Kugler has been involved in the opening of the emergency department in Long Beach while overseeing the hospital’s emergency department in Oceanside. The award is presented annually to an individual for extraordinary effort and individual contributions that significantly advance South Nassau’s commitment to health care services.

Yondeibi Espinal, lead environmental services aide for South Nassau, received the surprise of the night, the Cupola Award. He said he had a big job and was always busy but could be counted on any hour of the day or night, and would, no matter the difficulty, “get it done.” “I am very moved and honored by this award,” he said. This is the first year the Cupola Award was given. The cupola, which sits atop the original building, represents the hospital’s foundation and tradition of caring, and was chosen as the hospital’s symbol.

The $700,000 plus raised by this year’s Carnation Ball will be added to the five-year, $10 million fund-raising initiative to help pay for a $60 million renovation and expansion of the Oceanside Emergency Department. The department serves the south shore of Nassau County from Queens to Suffolk. The expansion project will increase the emergency rooms’ square footage from 16,000 to 30,000 square feet, increase its overall size by 87 percent and give it the necessary room to accommodate in excess of 80,000 patient visits each year. It will also establish dedicated areas for behavioral health and pediatric emergencies. The Emergency Department currently sees some 65,000 patients a year but was designed to handle 35,000 annually.