The state's largest hospital network has grown a little bigger. Struggling Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side will join Northshore-Long Island Jewish.

The now 15-hospital Northshore network has been moving steadily west from Nassau County to Queens and Staten Island. Acquiring Lennox Hill gives it a foothold in Manhattan.

Even before formally joining forces, Lenox Hill and Northshore together won a position filling in for recently closed St. Vincent's Medical Center, in the West Village, opening an around-the-clock "urgent care center" and operating an ambulance service to shuttle more serious cases from that facility to other emergency rooms nearby.