Mar 30, 2018 | Downtown, MSBI
March 30 is National Doctors’ Day. This date was designated a national holiday in the United States in 1990. In that spirit, I would like to offer a few thoughts on our MSBI physician community.
Over two thousand doctors are part of our MSBI family. They represent employed and voluntary faculty, primary and specialty care, inpatient and ambulatory care, hospital and community-based care, and collectively they cover a vast geography. These physicians include our exceptional residents and fellows. And our physician community also includes many retired doctors who are still vital parts of our family.
Our doctors are innovators, collaborators, colleagues, and friends. They are champions for excellence. They are our teachers and team members.
Our doctors put in long hours and go the extra mile every single day to ensure that our patients receive the care and caring that they need and deserve.
Our doctors struggle with us through the thick and the thin of our downtown transformation and hold us accountable for never losing sight of our core missions.
I am profoundly humbled by the strength, depth, and breadth of our extraordinary physician community and consider myself blessed to be your colleague.
With admiration and respect, happy National Doctors’ Day.
Mar 24, 2018 | Downtown, MSBI, Uncategorized
March is Social Work Month, and our social workers are some of the hardest working people I know.
MSBI has over 80 social workers that form a tight-knit system throughout our inpatient units, ambulatory practices, opioid treatment programs, cancer centers, and other practice environments.
We know our social workers are counselors and advocates for our patients who are most in need. They also serve as compassionate investigators and connectors and technical experts. These are just a few of the many ways they go above and beyond for their patients.
Recently, our Petrie social workers came across a mentally ill woman who couldn’t remember her own name. She was truly lost. They convinced her to allow her picture to be taken and then shared the picture with their community networks, connected the patient with her former caseworker, and got her home. In other instances, our social workers have used social media, blogs, and other online resources to connect patients with their loved ones after they had been staying in the hospital alone.
Our outpatient social workers also go above and beyond. Recently, a pregnant patient came in to see her obstetrician and was devastated that a flood had ruined many items including a baby swing she purchased to prepare for her newborn. The OB social worker connected her with a community-based program that helps provide families with needed resources, and the patient recovered $1200 worth of provisions to replace those that were ruined by the flood.
Next week, we will gather our incredible social workers for a lunch to celebrate and honor their amazing contributions our MSBI community. Thank you to all of our social workers this month, and always.
Mar 19, 2018 | Downtown, MSBI
It was wonderful that so many of you showed up to our appreciation events at the start of the month. These events were held at many of our MSBI locations to show appreciation for your participation in the patient experience survey back in December.
Thanks to our food services crew, who always go the extra mile!
The survey was the first step for some very important work we will do over the next few years. It starts with learning about how we can better support you in providing the best possible quality, safety, and caring to our patients and to each other. Our number one priority is to create an environment where you feel that you are able to do your best work.
Thank you for using your voice and feel free to reach out to me anytime: Jeremy.Boal@mssm.edu.
Mar 9, 2018 | Downtown, MSBI
I know you all can feel the incredible change we’ve been through over the last year and a half, and I’d like to highlight one of the teams helping to manage the transformation at MSBI. Their effort behind the scenes helped us move and consolidate many units last year (you can see more about this work in our 2017 year-end video).
Our Transformation Team manages and coordinates department moves, internal and external furniture and equipment requests, and clinical and security transformation projects. This team collaborates with many other departments and employees who collectively make it all a success, including Clinical, IT/Informatics, Telecommunication, Engineering, Environmental Services, Biomedical Engineering, Emergency Management, Security, Pharmacy, Materials Management, Administration, and many others. This work is dynamic and challenging because no move is exactly alike. However, the team has done an incredible job creating processes that allow for the smoothest possible transition for patients and our own people.
Members of our transformation team from left to right: Jackie Fink, Caroline Murphy, Adonijah Green, Brooke Feingold and Elizabeth Sellman.
In January, we faced one of our most challenging moves yet—relocating the Blood Bank from 3 Fierman to 12 Silver. The Blood Bank must always be available for our patients. Therefore, we could not have any downtime during the transition. The coordination and timing of each logistical piece of this move were extremely important to execute correctly. We also had to inform everyone of the exact timing of the change—down to the minute—in case blood was needed emergently at any time.
From left to right: Adonijah Green, Jackie Fink, Brooke Feingold, and Jean-Luc Coletta.
Thankfully, the transition was very smooth due to the continued collaboration and communication among so many teams. Check out our exceptional blood bank staff in their new space below.
Members of our Blood Bank team: Susy Vo, Morty Chowdhury, Jennifer Henry, Usha Shah, Syndey MacDonald, Paa Odoom-Tawiah, Shorove Uddin.
You may be relieved to hear that many key elements of the transformation involving inpatient services have been implemented. However, our transformation continues. We are renovating and growing practices at Union Square and Chelsea, and we are refining our clinical operations so that we will be ready when we move into our new hospital in 2021. I am incredibly grateful for your patience, creativity, teamwork, and resilience in the face of so much change.
Mar 2, 2018 | Downtown, MSBI, Uncategorized
By Dr. Jeremy Boal, President of Mount Sinai Downtown
I don’t have to tell you that working our way through the MSBI transformation is very complicated and dynamic. You are living it every day. We’ve learned that this much change, on top of an already demanding healthcare environment, requires a much more aggressive approach to identifying and solving the problems that get in the way of you and your colleagues doing your best work. In light of this, over the past year, we’ve taken a more proactive approach to solving problems that I want to tell you about.
Each morning at 9:00 am, my immediate team and I meet as a group to work on and solve current and ongoing issues that have been brought to our attention one way or another. We meet in the same room every day where we have a giant tracking board that we use to make sure that no issue, regardless of how big or how small, is ignored or forgotten. Here are some examples of things we’ve been working on recently…
- Transport team staffing enhancements
- Implementation of the hospital-wide security assessment recommendations
- Nor-Easter preparations
- A surgeon’s request for additional mid-level provider support in his practice
- A staff member report of broken equipment on a behavioral health unit
- Difficulty in obtaining Pyxis access for nurses floating to units
- Resident difficult in accessing an elevator during a rapid response event
- A request for a staff lounge for our CPEP unit
You get the idea. No issue is too small for us to take seriously. Everything that is reported to us matters. We keep a daily, weekly, and monthly grid of these topics – some things we can solve instantly and others are more complicated and take time to resolve. But we never give up.
Then, every day at 9:30 am, we join another 30 or so directors, managers, and department leads for our safety huddle. Our chief medical officer, Dr. Barbara Barnett, asks every hospital and ambulatory department to report on patient, staff, safety, and operational issues from the last 24 hours and for the next 24 hours. This meeting is all about connecting the right people and tackling daily challenges as quickly and collaboratively as possible. I’m often amazed at how rapidly our security, engineering, social work, environmental services, hospitalists, and so many other teams come to the rescue after this 9:30 am huddle. We truly have remarkable people taking care of us and our patients.
We want everyone in the organization to feel safe and comfortable bringing problems and ideas forward. In particular, we do not stand on ceremony with regard to traditional chains of command. We emphatically do not believe that rigid adherence to the traditional hierarchy (staff member to manager to director to vice president etc.) is healthy or required when things are as dynamic as they are here. The main thing is for you to feel comfortable bringing your problems and solutions to anyone you think will get the issue addressed. Many of our wonderful managers and supervisors can help you with your concerns. But, there is no wrong way to escalate any issue you are having. As we grow and change together, I hope you will reach out and let me know how we can help. You can e-mail me at any time. I would be so grateful to hear from you. Jeremy.Boal@mssm.edu.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Downtown, MSBI
By Dr. Jeremy Boal, President of Mount Sinai Downtown
I recently heard two stories about our patients and employees and their connections to animals. I hope they make you smile.
Maya Genovesi, a social worker in the ED, recently went to great lengths to ensure the care of a patient’s cat. The patient learned that she would be transferred to another hospital and would likely stay overnight, leaving her elderly Maine coon cat at home that has special medication and dietary needs. The patient did not have the contact information for her vet or other possible caregivers on her. Maya worked with her MSBI team, the patient’s other physicians, Animal Haven, and social workers at another hospital to ensure the patient could rest easy. Thank you for your compassion, Maya.
The team who helped take care of this patient, from left to right: Tina Mukwaya, social worker; Marc Felberbaum, MD; Gina Colon, RN, nursing supervisor; and Maya Genovesi, social worker.
Did you know MSBI has a small pet therapy program? Wonderful volunteers come with their pets a few times a month to Chelsea, Union Square, and Petrie to visit with patients and employees. You can see Stella, one of the therapy dogs below. As a dog-owner, I can say that even just a few minutes with these lovable creatures can brighten my day. This week we also hosted “Dogs for Docs” for our house staff, which was a fantastic opportunity for our residents to unwind with friends and paws.
