By Long Island Senior Advisor Care Team · August 21, 2026
St. Catherine of Siena is Smithtown's own Catholic Health hospital, and its discharge process -- staffed by RNs and social workers, tied to a sister-facility network -- looks different from Northwell's. Here's how it actually works.
Why the Hospital That Admits Your Parent Decides the Next 30 Days
If your parent lives in or near Smithtown and ends up in the hospital, there's a good chance it's St. Catherine of Siena Hospital on Route 25A -- Catholic Health Long Island's North Shore campus, and the only acute-care hospital based in the Town of Smithtown. That single fact matters more than families usually realize, because which health system admits your parent quietly sets the menu of options for what happens next: which skilled nursing facilities the discharge team calls first, which home care agency gets suggested by default, and how fast the clock starts running.
Long Island has four hospital systems with overlapping but distinct footprints -- Northwell Health, Catholic Health Long Island, Stony Brook Medicine, and NYU Langone. St. Catherine of Siena sits inside Catholic Health's network, alongside St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center in Roslyn, Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip and its St. Charles campus in Port Jefferson, Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre, and St. Joseph Hospital in Bethpage. A family that has only ever dealt with Northwell's Huntington Hospital a few miles away can be caught off guard by how different the referral process, the paperwork, and even the on-campus rehab options look once a Catholic Health hospital is the one doing the discharging.
St. Catherine of Siena's Discharge Team: Who You'll Actually Talk To
At St. Catherine of Siena, post-acute discharge planning is handled by a team of registered nurses and certified social workers embedded on the hospital floors, not a single case manager you meet once. Their job is to coordinate community referrals and resources and to arrange placement into skilled nursing, acute and sub-acute rehab, or assisted living, drawing on the wider resources of the Catholic Health system rather than treating your parent's hospital stay as an isolated event.
In practice, that means the earliest conversation you'll have is usually with a floor social worker, not a discharge planner with a title like that on their badge. Ask directly, on day one of admission if possible, who is assigned to your parent's discharge planning and how to reach them -- Long Island hospital floors move fast, and the family that identifies the right contact early gets more say in where their parent lands next. The hospital's main line is (631) 862-3000; ask the operator to connect you to the care management or social work department for your parent's unit.
The Rest of the Catholic Health Map: Mercy, Good Samaritan, St. Charles, St. Joseph
Understanding St. Catherine of Siena in isolation misses half the picture. Catholic Health Long Island, sponsored by the Diocese of Rockville Centre, runs its hospitals as one coordinated system, which means a rehab bed, a home care referral, or a specialist consult can route through a sister facility even when your parent was admitted in Smithtown. Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip and its St. Charles campus in Port Jefferson are the nearest Catholic Health facilities to the east and south; Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre and St. Joseph Hospital in Bethpage sit further west in Nassau, and St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center in Roslyn is the system's dedicated cardiac referral center.
For a Smithtown or Kings Park family, this matters most when a parent needs a specific level of cardiac, orthopedic, or rehab care that isn't available on the St. Catherine's campus -- the discharge team may recommend a transfer or a direct-admit to a sister Catholic Health facility rather than sending your parent outside the system entirely. It's a reasonable question to ask directly: 'is this recommendation coming from inside Catholic Health, or is it the best option regardless of system?' Both answers can be legitimate, but families deserve to know which one they're getting.
Catholic Health Home Care vs. an Outside Agency
When a hospital discharge plan calls for home-based nursing, physical therapy, home medical equipment, or respiratory care, St. Catherine of Siena's team typically arranges those services for patients who qualify, and Catholic Health Home Care -- the system's own affiliated home care agency -- is often the default referral. That can be a genuine convenience: shared medical records, a warm handoff from the hospital's own care team, and a single phone number to call with questions.
It is not, however, the only option, and New York law does not require a patient to use a hospital-affiliated agency. Families are entitled to ask for a list of certified home health agencies serving Smithtown and choose independently, particularly if a parent already has a home care relationship, a specific therapist they've worked with before, or a Medicaid managed long-term care plan that has its own network of contracted providers. If your parent is already enrolled in an MLTC plan, check with the plan directly before assuming Catholic Health Home Care is in-network -- MLTC plans, not the hospital, typically control which home care agencies they'll pay for once a patient is enrolled.
Where Discharge Patients Actually Land: Rehab, Skilled Nursing, or Home
St. Catherine of Siena's own campus includes St. Catherine of Siena Nursing & Rehabilitation, a Catholic Health-affiliated skilled nursing and sub-acute rehab facility, which makes an on-campus transfer administratively simple when a bed is available -- but 'simple' and 'right for your parent' aren't always the same thing. Smithtown families comparing options for skilled nursing or memory care commonly cross-shop with Huntington or Commack, both a short drive along the Route 25/Jericho Turnpike corridor, specifically because that comparison set gives a broader range of verified communities than staying inside a single town's options.
Before agreeing to whichever sub-acute rehab bed becomes available first, ask the discharge team for at least two or three named alternatives, their distance from your home, and whether they participate in your parent's specific Medicare Advantage or MLTC plan network -- a facility that looks convenient on a hospital's short list can turn out to be out-of-network and expensive if nobody checks the plan details before the transfer happens.
Paying for the Next Step: Medicaid, MLTC, and the NHTD Waiver
If your parent doesn't have long-term-care insurance or the private-pay resources to cover an extended nursing home or home care stay, the hospital discharge team should flag Medicaid long-term-care pathways as part of the planning conversation -- but the specifics are worth understanding before that meeting, not during it. New York's Managed Long Term Care (MLTC) program has been mandatory in both Nassau and Suffolk counties since the 2013 transition for Medicaid recipients aged 21 and older who need community-based long-term care for more than 120 days and can remain safely at home; enrollment routes through NY Medicaid Choice or your county's Office for the Aging, not through the hospital directly.
Two other pathways come up less often but matter for specific situations. The Nursing Home Transition and Diversion (NHTD) Medicaid waiver pays for home and community-based services for Medicaid-eligible seniors who are assessed as needing nursing-home-level care but can be served at home instead -- importantly, it pays for services only, never room and board or rent. The Assisted Living Program (ALP), by contrast, is Medicaid funding embedded inside specific licensed Adult Homes or Enriched Housing Programs, meaning it isn't a standalone voucher you can carry to any assisted living community -- ask the specific facility what portion of room-and-board cost the ALP rate actually covers, since that varies. Suffolk County's Office for the Aging, at 631-853-8200, is a reasonable starting point for screening across all three programs.
Smithtown's Own Geography: Why 'Close to St. Catherine's' Isn't One Answer
The Town of Smithtown is bigger and more varied than its downtown, and that matters when a discharge plan says 'a nearby rehab facility' without specifying which part of town. Kings Park, on Smithtown's North Shore, grew up around the former Kings Park Psychiatric Center, a state hospital that operated from 1885 to 1996 and whose grounds are now largely state parkland -- it has its own LIRR Port Jefferson Branch station, which matters for family members without a car making regular visits. St. James, also on the Port Jefferson Branch, is centered on the historic Saint James District and the 1845 Deepwells Farm estate, one of the area's oldest preserved homesteads, and tends to have a different housing stock and price point than downtown Smithtown proper.
When a hospital social worker describes a facility as being 'in Smithtown,' ask for the actual street address and cross-check the commute from wherever family members who'll be doing regular visits actually live -- a facility in St. James and one in Kings Park can be a 15-to-20-minute drive apart depending on traffic on 25A, which adds up fast over months of visits.
A Short Discharge-Day Checklist for Catholic Health Hospitals
A few habits make the discharge process from any Catholic Health Long Island hospital, St. Catherine of Siena included, go more smoothly. Get the name and direct phone number of the assigned social worker or discharge planner in writing, not just verbally, on the first or second day of admission. Ask explicitly whether the recommended next step -- rehab facility, home care agency, or equipment vendor -- is a Catholic Health-affiliated provider or an outside one, so you know whether you're seeing the full market or a subset of it.
Confirm insurance and Medicaid managed care network status for any recommended facility or agency before agreeing to the transfer; a plan's provider directory can be checked directly with the plan, and a facility being 'recommended by the hospital' doesn't guarantee it's in-network. Finally, if your parent is a Medicaid long-term-care candidate, start the MLTC or NHTD conversation with Suffolk County's Office for the Aging in parallel with the hospital discharge process rather than waiting until after discharge -- these applications take time, and starting early can prevent a gap between hospital discharge and the start of paid home care or facility coverage.
