In Good Hands

New York Community Hospital Offering High-Quality Care Just Steps From Home

If you’ve driven down Kings Highway in Midwood, you’ve probably passed by New York Community Hospital, a 134-bed medical center located in the heart of Flatbush, countless times.  A member of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System that also boasts an academic affiliation with Weill Cornell Medicine, NYCH is probably one of Brooklyn’s best kept secrets, offering lightning fast service and top- notch medical care all in one incredibly convenient location.

A quick visit to the NYCH website tells you that, at this facility, patients are priority number one.  Two on-site clocks on the home page give up to the minute waiting times for emergency room doctors and nurses, information that is also available on the hospital’ssmartphone app. A banner reading “We are a caring place” drives home the point that at the newly renovated NYCH, compassion and medicine go hand in hand.

Recently restructured and reconfigured to better meet the needs of the surrounding community and offer a much higher standard of care, NYCH’s roots in Midwood run deep. Originally founded as Madison Park Hospital in1929, the 59-bed Jewish maternity hospitallocated just off Bedford Avenue found itself in serious jeopardy in the mid-1960s when the New York State Department of Health required hospitals specializing in women’s and children’s health to deliver 2,400 babies each year in order to maintain their licensing. Because that number far exceeded the actual births performed at the facility, Madison Park Hospital changed its focus to provide both inpatient and outpatient medical and surgical services and added another 75 beds. Under its new name, Community Hospital of Brooklyn, the medical center continued to struggle in the late seventies because of New York City’s difficult economic climate. The hospital filed for bankruptcy in 1977; its financial struggles continuing until 1993 when it became a member of The New York Hospital.

It took just three years for the hospital’s fiscal tide to turn and since 1996 the facility has been on financially sound footing, joining the New York Presbyterian family and officially becoming known as the New York Community Hospital in 2009.  Hoping to better serve the community and its steadily rising number of patients, NYCH has undergone numerous modernizations in recent years, evolving into a state of the art, award-winning facility.

A New Era at NYCH

It was 2014 when Gedaliah Weinberger reached out to Barry Stern, a Midwood resident with a strong background in health care, asking him to step in as president and CEO of NYCH.  Stern, whose work history included eight years at Long Beach Medical Center and fifteen years at Maimonides Medical Center, was happy to join NYCH, hoping to reshape the facility from an overlooked community hospital into a local jewel, capable of serving the very diverse needs of nearby residents.

Stern, who lives just three blocks away from NYCH and is married to a doctor,  jumped into his new position feet first.

“I didn’t know a lot about the hospital at the time but it was clear right away that it was a much better facility than people realized,” Stern told The Jewish Echo.

Taking his first walk-through of the hospital with administrators, Stern was briefed on a number of possible projects that were on the facility’s to do list. He chose a complete overhaul of NYCH’s emergency room as his first major improvement.

“We relocated everything on the first floor of the hospital that we possibly could, like storage and testing areas, using the additional space to double the size of the ER,” said Stern. “That ground level footage is very valuable and was needed to better serve the community and provide critical services.”

The newly renovated space allowed NYCH to expand the number of  ER treatment bays from 16 to 29. A strict isolation area created to treat infectious patients proved extremely valuable in 2014 when several Ebola cases were confirmed in New York City.  Other upgrades included a separate pediatric area and ER Express and a fast track area for walk-in patients with minor issues.

With its increased functionality and larger capacity, NYCH’s revamped emergency room continues to serve as a designated 911 receiving hospital, offering both basic and advanced trauma life support.

“We can take care of anything an ER needs to do from strokes to heart attacks and just about everything else,” noted Stern.

The list of clinical services offered at NYCH is long and varied, including ambulatory surgery, cardiology, vascular and thoracic surgery, diagnostic radiology, a coronary intensive care unit, endoscopy, orthopedic surgery, pain management, urology, podiatry, and dialysis. The facility also offers bariatric surgery, one of the most often performed elective surgeries in the United States.

“We have really been building up the specialties that are here,” said Stern. “We have a broad range of just about every surgical specialty and on the medical side, we have everything you would expect to see in any other hospital, all supported with the latest in medical, surgical and imaging equipment.”

150+ Doctors, 31 Specialties and Counting… 

Among the many physicians who practice at NYCH is chief medical officer Dr. Steve Nozad, director of surgery and chief of urology Dr. Ralph Madeb, director of retina surgery and medical director for ambulatory surgery Dr. Norman Saffra and Dr. Enrico Ascher, founderand director of the Vascular Institute of New York.  Having an affiliation with the vast New York Presbyterian Healthcare network provides patients direct access to more than 40 associated medical institutions.

“Patients who come in requiring specialized treatment that cannot be provided at our facility are stabilized by our excellent medical team and can then be transferred seamlessly to a hospital that can meet their needs,” explained Stern. “Because we are part of the network, patients go right to a bed with our doctor-to- doctor transfer instead of having to start all over again in another emergency room.”

Yet because it is a community hospital, NYCH can provide patients with a level of fast, efficient service and shortened waiting times that are impossible to achieve at a large institution.

“In a small hospital, key management and physician staff have the ability to focus on individual patients and their needs,” observed Stern.  “Our patients get coordinated care like nowhere else. Our floors shine. Our food gets compliments. Our people work as a team. No wonder our patients can smile, even during a difficult time in their lives.”

Uniquely positioned to take advantage of the best parts of both smaller and larger facilities, NYCH provides the best of both worlds, a feat that most hospitals can only dream of.

Catering to the Community

Another secret to NYCH’s success?  Understanding the wants and needs of the local population, which  Stern describes as a veritable melting pot.  NYCH goes out of its way to make sure that every patient feels comfortable and respected, offering multilingual translation services and flexible visiting hours.  But nestled as it is in the heart of the Flatbush area Jewish community, NYCH understands the requirements of its Jewish patients and has been certified kosher for years by the Vaad Harabbanim of Flatbush.

“All of our food is kosher and we even offer free meals to family members who come to be with our patients,” said Stern.  “That way they never have to leave to get food and can, instead, spend their time attending to their loved ones.  We have a bikur cholim room set up by Yad Ephraim that has all needed equipment:  a microwave, warmer and a refrigerator stocked with goodies.”

The hospital also works closely with local Jewish organizations including Hatzolah, COJO of Flatbush and the JCC of Marine Park. Stern said that NYCH is anxious to engage the Jewish community for greater feedback.

“We want to make sure we are delivering all of the services that people need,” said Stern. “We are working closely with community members, local bikur cholim organizations and enhancing our outreach efforts, so that people will be comfortable and we can get them the services they need without having to shlep elsewhere on Shabbos or Yom Tov.”

While some might be daunted by having to compete with the many prominent Manhattan hospitals that have made inroads in recent years into adjacent boroughs, Stern is confident that NYCH can more than hold its own against the “big boys.”

“We concentrate on giving our patients the best quality care and then let their experiences with us govern their future choices,” explained Stern.

In fact, NYCH has gained a reputation as a boutique community hospital, the only hospital in Brooklyn to receive a coveted three-star rating from the federally run Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, whose quality rating system provides consumers with unbiased, independent third party surveys that measure patient satisfaction at medical facilities.

“Those scores are updated quarterly and we consistently score among the highest in the area,” remarked Stern.  “Those surveys measure a variety of factors including medical and nursing care, housekeeping, safety statistics, infection rates, fall rates, morbidity and many others. It is an incredibly detailed evaluation of any hospital and we have been doing very well.”

According to the latest statistics on the CMS website, of 38 hospitals in New York City, 31 earned either a one or two-star rating, a statistic that speaks volumes about NYCH’s ability to repeatedly earn a three-star ranking.

“When you want to know about a restaurant, you look on Yelp and for appliances you would likely go to Google, but when it comes to rating healthcare services, CMS is the best place to see a statistically valid synopsis and we are excited that we have done a great job of making people happy, particularly since we serve every demographic you can possibly imagine,” said Stern.

Stern has enjoyed shepherding NYCH to the next level, and he hopes that consumers will recognize that in just a few short years, the hospital has advanced by leaps and bounds. He has no problem acknowledging that the facility isn’t equipped to handle every case but said that, in most instances, NYCH provides stellar service.

“We recently had a patient who was a child but was adult sized,” said Stern. “The family was willing to let us treat him but outside of our emergency room, we don’t have the specialists on site to handle pediatric cases. We won’t do what we feel we won’t do well because it is not just inefficient but also inappropriate.”

Looking ahead, Stern is confident that his former patients will be NYCH’s best advertising.

“We know that people who come to us will be positively impressed because based on the CMS process we know that our patients are happy,” said Stern.  “People are coming to us because they have heard about the excellent level of care we provide because the doctors they have confidence in practice here and because they are getting an incredibly high level of service right here in their own backyard.”