Marc Napp, MD, at the head of the emergency management team table during the earliest days of the COVID-19 crisis—before social distancing was the rule.
Leading the Mount Sinai Health System’s initial COVID-19 emergency management response, Marc Napp, MD, Senior VP for Medical Affairs and Deputy Chief Medical Officer, went on to also oversee the system-wide management of our deployment medical staff and advanced practice provider resources. Rapidly assembling an extraordinary team composed of department chairs and other medical and allied health staff leaders, Medical Staff Services personnel, and administrators from across the Health System, he created a robust process to identify, recruit, contract, assess, onboard, train, and deploy nearly 400 providers. Cool and collected throughout this crisis, he led this team to bring in the essential staffing resources that we needed to save lives and relieve our own COVID-19-battle-weary providers.
Each day conducting a system-wide status check of our Emergency Departments, hospital medicine units, Intensive Care Units, and Palliative Care Services, Marc and the team conducted ongoing needs assessments and directed all efforts to ensure adequate staffing at each site in each critical department. With no prior experience to guide them, he and the team evaluated staffing models for efficiency and effectiveness, and researched scheduling patterns to optimize productivity, while minimizing exhaustion, burn-out, and errors. He strategically leveraged the expertise of the clinical operations leaders at each site to make critical and informed decisions collectively, driving “system-ness” in ways not seen before. Working 12-16-hour days, seven days per week, to ensure our patient-care needs were met, he was always patient and empathetic.
Demonstrating humility, compassion, and a deep commitment to the job, he has been a pillar of strength for many of us. Marc’s imperturbability allowed us to remain calm and confident. And importantly, we knew he cared about our well-being as much as executing the mission of high quality and safe care for our patients; we knew we could go to him for any of our needs, professional or personal.
I have worked with CMOs across the nation as a consultant for many years—Marc is by far, the best. He is what has made our entire team #sinaiproud.
Submitted by: Anne Roberts, Vice President, Medical Staff Services, Mount Sinai Health System
With: Lee Fiebert, Senior Director, Clinical Operations, Deputy Chief of Staff, Mount Sinai Health System