Lenox Hill Hospital Wins Best Maternity Award, Contentious Renovation Plans Continues Apace
We talked to Lenox Hill’s executive director Dr. Daniel Baker, MD, about his response to the honor, as well as what his thoughts are regarding the timeline and necessity of the hospital’s massive renovation.
| 16 May 2023 | 02:09
The exterior of Lenox Hill Hospital. Photo credit: Google Street View. (
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Dr. Daniel Baker, the executive director of Lenox Hill Hospital. Photo Credit: Northwell Health. (
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Lenox Hill Hospital has been named “America’s Best Maternity Hospital” for the second year in a row by Newsweek. Frank Chervenak, MD, the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Lenox Hill, responded to the honor by stating: “Lenox Hill Hospital has an exceptional team of doctors, nurses, midwives, physician assistants and administrators that deliver the highest quality of care to mothers and their infants. I am grateful and proud of their award-winning dedication.”
We talked to Lenox Hill’s executive director Dr. Daniel Baker, MD, about his thoughts on the award, which comes as the hospital is also undergoing a major renovation process. “I’m really proud of the work that we’ve been doing with our mother-baby population. The pride of so many people having been born at Lenox Hill being married to awards such as this, it shows the emphasis on the safety of the care and really making sure that we are at the top of our game with clinical excellence,” Baker said.
Regarding the renovation, which is estimated to take up to ten years (and cost about $2 billion dollars) to complete according to a scoping document on file with the Department of City Planning, Baker notes that “what I have been advocating amongst our build team–as well as around the community–is that I’d like this project to go as fast as possible.” In other words, Lenox Hill is seeking to complete the renovation in under the projected ten years. As Baker puts it, “we feel the need to revitalize and redevelop, and the faster we do that it’s really better for everybody.”
Baker reemphasized that he believes this is aligned with community interest, and that “the shorter the duration, the better. The community viewpoint and the hospital viewpoint are really synergistic.”
Baker thinks that the scoping meeting with the Department of City Planning stymied true community-hospital dialogue by placing undue weight on protocol, and said that ever since introducing the project in 2019 “we’ve been soliciting the opinions of various political leaders and various community leaders.”
Baker stresses that there is one area where compromise does not seem possible from the hospital’s end, which is closure during construction: “Some of the voices that have asked for us to just close down during construction, or move off-site, they’re just not logistically feasible. They kind of break our promise to our patients equally, and that’s just something we have to understand.”
In other words, Lenox Hill expects to remain a stalwart UES institution, and the hospital hopes to maintain operating capacity and undergo an extensive and expensive renovation simultaneously. Whether community stakeholders will accede to this without further protest remains to be seen.