By Long Island Senior Advisor Care Team · July 29, 2026
Northwell Health runs nine hospitals on Long Island, its own certified home care agency, and a home-based primary care program for homebound seniors -- but its discharge timelines still move fast. Here is how the process actually works across those campuses, and what a family should verify before signing off on a plan.
Nine Hospitals, One System, Different Doors
Northwell Health is the largest health system serving Long Island, and it operates nine hospitals across Nassau and Suffolk counties: North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, Huntington Hospital, Glen Cove Hospital, Plainview Hospital, Syosset Hospital, South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, Mather Hospital in Port Jefferson, and Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead. A family whose relative is admitted to any one of these is dealing with the same parent organization, the same electronic health record, and largely the same discharge machinery, even though each campus has its own case management staff and its own local culture around how fast beds need to turn over.
That matters because a lot of what families experience as "the hospital's discharge process" is really Northwell's system-wide process wearing a different building's name. Understanding how it works at one campus, whether that is Huntington Hospital near the Huntington hub this site covers, or South Shore University Hospital further out on the South Shore, tells you most of what to expect at any of the other eight.
Discharge Planning Starts at Admission, Not at the End of the Stay
Across Northwell's Long Island hospitals, discharge planning is not a single conversation that happens the day someone leaves. Per the hospitals' own patient-information pages, a case manager or social worker is typically assigned based on a patient's medical needs early in the admission, and that person is responsible for coordinating what happens next, whether that is home care, physical rehabilitation, or a longer-term placement. The stated goal on the record is a discharge plan that is safe and appropriate, not simply the fastest bed turnover, but families should still treat the first meeting with a case manager as the real start of the clock, not a formality.
Ask for the name and direct contact information of the assigned case manager or social worker on day one, not day three. If a family is not approached within the first day or two of what looks like a short admission, it is reasonable to ask the nursing staff directly who has been assigned and to request a meeting. Our situations guide on what to do when discharge is 72 hours away walks through the fastest safe path once that clock is already running; the point here is that engaging earlier gives a family more room to actually use it.
Where Discharge Instructions Actually Live: the FollowMyHealth Portal
Northwell's patient portal is called FollowMyHealth, and it is where discharge paperwork ends up after a hospital stay at any Northwell facility, including all nine Long Island hospitals. Once a patient is set up with an account (at northwell.edu/mypatientportal), discharge instructions appear among the documents generated during and after a visit or admission, typically under a Documents tab, alongside prescriptions, lab results, and physician notes.
This is worth setting up before a hospital stay if at all possible, not scrambling to activate during one. Adult children coordinating care for a parent from a distance, or families managing a spouse's care while also working, often find the portal is the fastest way to get a copy of the actual written discharge plan rather than relying on a rushed verbal summary at the bedside on the day of discharge.
Northwell at Home: the System's Own Certified Home Care Agency
When a Northwell discharge plan includes home care, the referral very often points toward Northwell Health at Home, the system's own Certified Home Health Agency, headquartered at 1101 Stewart Avenue, Suite 215, in Garden City (866-651-4600). It is one of the largest home care agencies in New York State, serving more than 50,000 patients a year across the New York metro area and Long Island with a staff of roughly 2,000 nurses, physical and occupational therapists, speech-language therapists, social workers, and home health aides.
Families should know two things at once here. First, being referred to an affiliated agency is not automatically a bad outcome; Northwell at Home is a large, established Certified Home Health Agency with a real track record, including national recognition for its heart failure home care outcomes. Second, New York patients generally retain the right to choose a different certified home health agency than the one a discharge planner defaults to suggesting, and it is reasonable to ask what other agencies serve the same ZIP code before agreeing to the first name offered, particularly if a family already has a relationship with a different provider or has heard about availability problems with a specific agency.
House Calls: A Different Program, for a Narrower Group of Patients
Separate from home health aides and skilled nursing visits, Northwell also runs House Calls, a home-based primary care program built for homebound seniors who genuinely cannot get to a doctor's office, not simply seniors who find office visits inconvenient. A House Calls team of physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, social workers, and medical coordinators sees patients at home for primary care, including same-day services like basic imaging and lab work, and Medicare must be the patient's primary insurance to enroll.
The program has been recognized by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for nine consecutive years for high-quality, cost-saving home-based primary care, and has been awarded a cumulative $26.6 million in CMS incentive payments while generating an estimated $43.5 million in cost savings. For a Long Island family whose parent is truly homebound after a hospitalization, meaning leaving home requires considerable effort and is medically risky or physically difficult, House Calls is worth asking a discharge planner about directly; it is not automatically offered the way a home health referral is, and it replaces ongoing primary care visits rather than providing short-term post-hospital recovery services the way Northwell at Home does.
A Concrete Scenario: 72 Hours' Notice from a Northwell Hospital
Say a parent is admitted to South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore after a fall, and on day three the assigned case manager says discharge is planned for the following day. In practice, the family's leverage at that point is narrow but real: ask to see the written discharge plan through FollowMyHealth rather than relying on a verbal summary, confirm in writing whether the recommended next step is Northwell at Home, a Northwell-affiliated rehab facility, or an outside skilled nursing placement, and ask explicitly whether the hospital believes the patient qualifies for a Medicare-covered short-term rehab stay rather than being sent directly home.
If the family believes the discharge plan is unsafe, whether because home care hours look insufficient or because a rehab placement is being proposed at a facility nobody has actually toured, Medicare beneficiaries have the right to request an expedited review of a hospital discharge decision before leaving, through the Quality Improvement Organization listed in the discharge paperwork. That review right exists independent of which hospital system is involved, and it is one of the few formal levers a family has if 72 hours genuinely is not enough time to arrange something safe.
What the System Won't Verify for You
Because Northwell operates hospitals, a large home care agency, and a home-based primary care program all under one umbrella, it is easy for a family to assume that whatever the discharge planner recommends has already been vetted against every alternative. It has not, at least not in the sense of comparing Northwell's own affiliated options against every non-Northwell agency, adult home, or assisted living community in Nassau or Suffolk. A discharge planner's job is a safe, timely discharge, not a comprehensive market survey.
That verification job still belongs to the family. For a licensed facility being considered as a next step rather than a return home, New York's Health Profiles site at profiles.health.ny.gov/acf lets anyone look up a specific Adult Care Facility's licensing status and inspection history directly, independent of anything a hospital recommends. For ongoing questions about what County-level supports exist once someone is home, Nassau County and Suffolk County each run their own, separate Office for the Aging, and both are worth calling regardless of which Northwell hospital a family is discharging from. For a broader walkthrough of the discharge process itself across all Long Island hospitals, not just Northwell's, see our companion guide on what to do when a Long Island hospital says discharge in 72 hours.
