The federal government has just cut a $3 million check to help pay for badly-needed renovations to the Interfaith Medical Center in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The money was secured in last year’s government funding package, according to US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who celebrated the event on Friday outside the hospital together with fellow New York Democrats US Senator Chuck Schumer and US Representative Hakeem Jeffries, as well as Interfaith management, Brooklyn Paper reported.
More than 50,000 Brooklyn residents are treated each year in the hospital’s decades-old emergency department. Approximately 15 percent of those who receive outpatient care at Interfaith do not have any medical insurance and cannot pay for health care.
The hospital services Crown Heights and the nearby Bedford-Stuyvesant and Prospect Place neighborhoods.
Schumer, who serves as Senate Majority leader, called the announcement “a great example of federal funds being used to ensure historically underserved communities have the same access and quality services as anywhere else would.”
“It is critically important that the healthcare heroes here at Interfaith Medical Center and across the One Brooklyn Health system have the ability to do their tremendous work in the most modern environment possible,” added Jeffries, who serves as the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives.
“Interfaith has been providing high-quality, compassionate care and 21st-century care in 20th-century infrastructure.”
