NYC Health + Hospitals
Fiscal Year 2024 Annual Public Meeting – Staten Island
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Report by Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and CEO
Good evening, my name is Dr. Mitch Katz and I’m the President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals. This is my seventh year here at the health system, and I continue to be proud and honored to lead this institution. I don’t do this alone, of course. There are some 9,000 nurses, 4,000 providers, social workers, environmental service workers, and thousands of other staff who ensure that New Yorkers received the high-quality care they deserve.
Some of those folks are in the room today. I want to thank our Board Members who are here, the staff who have spent long hours organizing these meetings, and the team here tonight who will ensure that your words are captured for all our leadership to hear.
I want to thank those of you in the audience and speaking this evening. Your presence here demonstrates how much you care about NYC Health + Hospitals, the quality of health care in our neighborhoods, and the community both inside and outside of our facilities. I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Before we begin though, I do want to highlight some of our achievements from this past year. Our goal has always been to expand access to care for more New Yorkers regardless of their ability to pay or immigration status, offer the highest quality of care, and advance our values of equity, diversity and inclusion.
Here are just a few highlights of the amazing achievements from the last year.
- We opened a new hospital. The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospital on the campus of South Brooklyn Health is a bright, beautiful space for our patients to receive care. The 11-story building was designed to withstand the next 500-year storm.
- Our nurses had a big year: they gained pay parity with private hospitals thanks to a new NYSNA contract.
- We remained at the forefront of the city’s response to the historic asylum seeker crisis, providing shelter, health care, casework, and social services to thousands of asylum seekers at our Arrival Center and humanitarian centers.
- Correctional Health Services opened the first-ever reentry service center on Rikers Island, a resource hub for the hundreds of people who are released from Rikers each year as well as members of the public and staff.
- The health system’s Lifestyle Medicine Program is now in every borough, including at NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst.
- All of our hospitals began serving plant-based meals as the primary choice for dinner, encouraging our patients to eat tasty food that promotes better health outcomes.
- NYC Care, our program for those who cannot afford or are not eligible for health insurance, hit a milestone of 125,000 members.
- Over 500 patients found permanent housing working with our Housing for Health team this year.
- We successfully advocated for $95.1 million in city, state, and federal funding for medical equipment and structural upgrades for our facilities.
- We opened a new Extended Care Unit at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County for patients who are discharged from psychiatric inpatient care and want continued support. Patients stay in the ECU for up to 90 days to work on rehabilitation and reintegrating into the community. The ECU at Kings County Hospital joins a successful program at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue launched in 2020.
- Nine new murals can be found around our facilities thanks to the Arts in Medicine department’s Community Mural Project.
- We finished converting medical units to psychiatric units after COVID and now have 1,000 psychiatric beds online.
- We broke ground on a new housing development on the NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull campus that will have 93 apartments, including 56 units of supportive housing for our patients.
- We distributed $1 million in debt relief to 27 behavioral health providers in exchange for a three-year commitment to serving our health system. We expect to continue this program and distribute to more providers this year.
- We launched telehealth medication abortion services through Virtual ExpressCare — becoming the first public health system in the nation to do so.
- We were once again recognized by the American Heart Association and American Medical Association for providing high quality care in several areas, including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, stroke, and resuscitation.
- We expanded our services for survivors of domestic violence by bringing behavioral health services to the city’s domestic violence shelter system, providing on-site services to adults and children. The initiative started in 9 shelters in 2023. We also opened two specialized mental health clinics for survivors at NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln and NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County.
- NYC Health + Hospitals surgical service expanded its DaVinci Surgical Robot program throughout the system. This brings high-quality surgical services to all our patients.
- Our Low Dose CT Lung Cancer Screening Program was initiated at 3 pilot sites. To date, 3,961 patients have been screened. The NYC Health + Hospitals screening rate is 24% of all eligible people, which higher than the national rate of 6%. From an equity lens, 23% were Black, 25% were Hispanic, 24% were White, 26% were Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander.
- The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Team launched a multi-year project with The New York City Administration for Children’s Services and Public Policy Lab to improve referral pathways so we can increase the number of NYC Health + Hospital patient families who receive community-based prevention services and reduce the number of families who are unnecessarily subjected to child abuse investigations.
STATEN ISLAND NEWS AND HIGHLIGHTS
I would be remiss if I didn’t specifically highlight our NYC Health + Hospitals/Sea View and NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Vanderbilt facility accomplishments.
- Newsweek once again ranked NYC Health + Hospitals/Seaview the #1 Nursing Home in New York State. Three of our other skilled nursing facilities ranked in the top ten, and the fifth was ranked in the top 30. Impressive for a state with over 600 nursing homes.
- U.S. News & World Report recognized four of our skilled nursing facilities, including NYC Health + Hospitals/Sea View for high performance in short-term rehabilitation and long-term care.
- In January of this year, the nursing facility also received its Parkinson’s Care certification.
- Finally, NYC Health + Hospitals/Sea View consistently earns five-star ratings from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which designates five-star rated skilled nursing facilities among the top 10 percent of nursing homes in the country.
- At NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Vanderbilt last September we opened a Buprenorphine Clinic that provides comprehensive treatment for individuals with substance use disorder. It has since been expanded to include treatment for different forms of substance abuse.
- Earlier in March, the facility launched its lifestyle medicine program, which is growing every day with new patient volume
- A new full time Women’s Health provider was hired, expanding health care access to community.
- The NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Vanderbilt Pediatrics Department recently introduced Reach out and Read to its patients. Providers work with families of young pediatric patients and teach them the importance of reading at an early age.
- And finally, the site received an “LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Leader” designation from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) for its inclusive care.
It takes all of us to make NYC Health + Hospitals succeed. And we could not do it without all of you – our patients and patient advocates, community-based organizations, elected officials, and other members of the communities we serve. Thank you for being here tonight and for your support of our essential public health care system.
Now let’s proceed to the main purpose of tonight’s meeting – to hear from you, members of our community. Your input is so important to the future success of NYC Health + Hospitals. We are ready to listen.
I will now turn to our General Counsel to outline the proceeding for tonight’s meeting.