Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
Frances Cartwright, PhD, RN-BC, and David L. Reich, MD, back row, sixth and eighth from the left, respectively, gathered with all of the recipients of the 36th Annual Excellence in Nursing Practice Awards.
“We celebrate the heart of Mount Sinai, the Department of Nursing,” said David L. Reich, MD, President of The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens, at the 36th Annual Excellence in Nursing Practice Awards ceremony on Tuesday, May 9. The event, held in Stern Auditorium during National Nurses Week, honored 15 individuals who were nominated by their peers for their leadership skills and support of excellence in patient care. Mount Sinai Trustee Edgar M. Cullman, Jr. congratulated the honorees and told them they were “excellent every day.”
Magnet Nurse of the Year winner, Agnieszka Mieczkowska, RNC, BSN, first became affiliated with Mount Sinai as a 16-year-old volunteer. “I am accepting this award on behalf of all Magnet nurses at Mount Sinai,” she said. “We are all in this together.”
The Mount Sinai Hospital held a series of activities during National Nurses Week that included catered breakfasts and unit rounds made by nursing leadership who thanked staff. Nurses also attended a talk with Margaret Edson, author of Wit—a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a woman coming to terms with metastatic ovarian cancer.
“Mount Sinai is fortunate to have a bevy of experienced and compassionate nurses,” said Frances Cartwright, PhD, RN-BC, Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President, Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens. “Your peers nominated more than 40 individuals for these awards. While we honor 15 individuals today, I commend the exceptional skills of all nominated.”
The 15 honorees were: Kerri Biktjorn, RN, BSN; Cynthia Bobadilla, RN, BSN; Carol Boyle, RN, BSN; Elizabeth Cariseo, RN, BSN, CHPN; Lydia Creary, RN, BSN; Ruth Directo-Arreza, RN, BSN; Beata Fanzloch; Radley Flores, RN, BSN; Katie Ip, RN, MSN, BSN; Salvatore LaVecchia; Brenda Luke, RN, BSN; Kenny Ma, RN, BSN; Agnieszka Mieczkowska, RN-C, BSN; Dominique Monsegur, RN, BS; and Carlie Regis, RN, BSN.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community
From left, Dennis S. Charney, MD; Allison Charney; Beth Essig; Mount Sinai Trustee Blaine V. Fogg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Legal Aid Society; and Sena Kim-Reuter.
The Mount Sinai Health System recently launched the Mount Sinai Medical-Legal Partnership, a nonprofit organization created to help address the needs of patients living in poverty.
“While we provide extraordinary health care, sometimes legal services are necessary, even critical, for our patients to get well and stay well,” Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, said at a kickoff event on Wednesday, April 26, at the Corporate Services Center, 150 E. 42nd Street. “That is why I am so proud of the mission of this partnership, which tracks so closely with the mission of Mount Sinai.”
The partnership was the idea of Beth Essig, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Mount Sinai Health System, who recruited two co-chairs: Bettina Plevan, a partner at Proskauer Rose LLP, and Allison Charney, a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, who proudly said that her father, Dr. Charney, was “all-in” from the start. Sena Kim-Reuter, President of the partnership, is an experienced litigator who has been recruiting pro bono lawyers and studying the best way to serve patients, with three projects under way:
- At the Center for Transgender Surgery and Medicine, lawyers are helping patients with a variety of issues, including changing their legal name and gender markers, and handling Medicaid and health insurance matters.
- At The Lilian and Benjamin Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute, lawyers will help patients with standby guardianships of their children.
- At the Child and Family Institute at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, the Partnership and the Legal Aid Society were awarded a $1.3 million grant from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to hire two full-time attorneys and a part-time social worker for a three-year program to help patients get the special services they need in school.
The partnership also plans to work with pro bono legal services providers such as the New York Legal Assistance Group, the Legal Aid Society, and Youth Represents. “We have been very busy,” Ms. Kim-Reuter says, “but this is just the beginning.”
Jun 5, 2017 | Community
Zibby Schwarzman and Kyle Owens, Crystal Party Chairs
More than 1,100 leaders, staff, supporters, and friends of the Mount Sinai Health System celebrated a year of significant progress and accomplishments on Thursday, May 4, at the 32nd annual Crystal Party, Mount Sinai’s major social event of the season. The Crystal Party is a festive occasion that raises several million dollars annually and helps support key educational, clinical, and research programs of the Health System and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Guests enjoyed cocktails, dinner, and dancing inside a huge tent adorned with pink and orange flowers and multicolored lights that was located in the Central Park Conservatory Garden.
Mount Sinai Trustee Zibby Schwarzman and Kyle Owens chaired this year’s celebration. Other members of the event’s leadership included Doctor Chairs: Frances Cartwright, PhD, and Peter Alcarese; Leesa M. Galatz, MD, and David J. Finlay, MD; Kathleen and William B. Inabnet III, MD; and Cindie and Donald Kastenbaum, MD; and Friends of Mount Sinai Chairs: Dayna and Thomas Sessa.
Peter W. May, Chairman, Boards of Trustees, Mount Sinai Health System, welcomed guests and thanked them for their support in helping Mount Sinai push the “boundaries of medicine, while also succeeding in a new cost-conscious era of health care delivery.” Mr. May said, “In recent months, our teams have made discoveries regarding cancers of the blood, liver, and bladder; congenital heart defects; sepsis; and autism.” As a “world-class health system that encompasses seven hospitals, numerous centers of excellence for specialized care, and dozens of ambulatory clinics, we have positioned Mount Sinai for success in the new era of value-focused population health management.”
Howard C. Katz and Mount Sinai Emeritus Trustee Ellen P. Katz
Mount Sinai Trustee Blaine V. Fogg and Diane Fogg
Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mount Sinai Health System, told the attendees, “We have become a health system that takes advantage of its size and geography to produce efficiencies and economies of scale. We are also growing and investing in all our facilities and the communities we serve.”
Dr. Davis said Mount Sinai’s downtown practices on the East and West Sides of Manhattan are becoming centers of excellence in multiple specialties, and the Mount Sinai Health System is becoming truly integrated, with The Mount Sinai Hospital excelling in intensive care, among other areas; Mount Sinai West specializing in orthopedics and neurosurgery; and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s pursuing advances in heart disease. “Your philanthropy,” he told the guests, “is a very meaningful part of all that progress.”
From left: U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) with Kenneth L. Davis, MD, and Peter W. May
Jun 5, 2017 | Community
Judy H. Cho, MD, front row, center, with members of the BioMe™ BioBank team on DNA Day.
With cake pops appropriately arranged in the shape of a double helix, DNA Day was recently celebrated at the Guggenheim Pavilion. The event, on Wednesday, April 26, was organized by the BioMe™ BioBank team of The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine and commemorated the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953 and the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003.
The team also recruited volunteers for its program, which collects de-identified DNA and plasma for research purposes, signing up more than 38,000 people to date.
“We are fortunate to have a great amount of diversity among our participants, including many Mount Sinai employees,” says Judy H. Cho, MD, Director of The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine and Ward-Coleman Professor of Translational Genetics. “Growing is central to our efforts in applying precision medicine to benefit patients.”
Jun 5, 2017 | Community
Charles P. Melone Jr., MD
Charles P. Melone Jr., MD, a renowned hand surgeon who has treated a wide spectrum of patients—from star players for the New York Yankees and New York Knicks to earthquake victims in Haiti—has received two prestigious honors.
Dr. Melone, Director of the Hand Surgery Center at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and Professor of Orthopaedics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in February received the Founders Alumni Award for achievement in medicine from his alma mater, Georgetown University. And in March, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Society for Surgery of the Hand. Dr. Melone, a leader in microsurgery and arthritis treatment, has performed more than 30,000 operations.
“These awards reflect Dr. Melone’s extraordinary contributions to hand surgery over his greater than 40-year clinical career,” says Peter D. McCann, MD, Chair of Orthopaedic Surgery, Mount Sinai Beth Israel. “We are extremely fortunate to have a surgeon of such accomplishments on the Mount Sinai Beth Israel staff.”
Jun 5, 2017 | Community
Mount Sinai Doctors harnessed the photography skills of everyday citizens with a citywide contest. Held over four months ending in April, the contest aimed to highlight the growing presence of Mount Sinai Doctors throughout New York City. Participants entered by posting a photograph taken of—or from—a Mount Sinai Doctors location on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter with #MSDNYC.
From 208 entries, 10 photographs were selected, including an image of The Mount Sinai Hospital campus from Central Park and a close-up of tulips and truck graffiti outside a Mount Sinai practice on the Upper East Side. The prize for each winning photograph was a $200 American Express gift card.
