REPORT TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS – October 2014

Good afternoon. As customary, I will highlight just a few items from the full version of my report to the board. The full version is available to all here and will be posted on our website.

I’d like to start my report today with an update about our Ebola preparedness.

First, I’d like to stress the good news. There are no reported cases of this disease in New York City or in New York State. We’ve screened patients but we have not had a single case of Ebola at any our hospital or across the city.

I have to say how proud I am to see our employees rising to the public health challenge before us with professionalism, caring, and devotion to the City of New York. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve seen it many many times before – Our committed staff coming together to serve and comfort the public, while putting their own needs aside to meet the needs of our patients and community.

Though we hope we never have to, this corporation is prepared to extend our unique style of culturally competent and compassionate care to potential victims of this infectious disease. Everyone should get care regardless of their insurance or immigration status. That’s been the city’s message to New Yorkers – particularly for the members of the West African community whom we proudly serve. And HHC always stands ready to deliver on that mission.

It’s been more than two and a half months since we started planning and preparing to get our system ready to screen and treat any patients presenting with possible Ebola symptoms. As reports of the accelerated spread of Ebola virus disease in three countries in West Africa were disseminated by international and federal public health authorities, our system began to put safeguards in place to provide information, training and the equipment and supplies needed to protect our patients and our staff. Since then, we have been collaborating closely with the City Department of Health, CDC and the State Department of Health.

We sent “secret shopper” patients to simulate suspicious criteria in order to test and help us hone our screening protocols. We conducted drills to practice donning and doffing off protective gear. And we adopted the buddy system, which has now become the norm, where one health care worker watches and protects the other put on and take off personal protective gear without contaminating themselves.

Early on in this process, we determined that Bellevue Hospital was going to serve as our dedicated center of care if any other HHC facility had a high-risk or confirmed patient. And later, the State Department of Health agreed and identified Bellevue as one of eight hospitals in New York to serve as preferred centers of care for Ebola. While we’ve invested extraordinary resources to get Bellevue ready, we’ve made sure that every single one of our hospitals and clinic entry points are also prepared.

Under the direction of Dr. Ross Wilson, our Chief Medical Officer, we have set up a centralized command and response structure with daily conference calls to share updates on every aspect of patient care and preparedness and oversee standardized communications strategies and messages to keep staff informed.

We have a dedicated intranet site that is available to all staff for basic information about training, protocols, and news of latest developments, as well as a phone line and a designated email address for staff to share concerns, questions, and suggestions. Each facility is hosting their own staff town hall meetings and we’ve established formal communication with our labor partners both locally at our facilities through the Labor/Management Councils, and centrally. The Central Office hosted several meetings of our labor leaders to address their questions and concerns and jointly seek solutions on outstanding issues. And earlier this week, I joined FDM Shorris and a number of city agency commissioners to brief the members of the Municipal Labor Council

While the future course of infectious diseases cannot be known, I feel that our corporation has prepared comprehensively in a relatively short time. Much work remains and is still ongoing, and systematic preparation efforts by our teams will continue for as long as necessary.

I want to express my gratitude to Dr. Wilson, all the central office leadership and the facility administrators, medical and nursing leaders and most importantly our frontline staff who have been working day and night to protect our patients and our staff. I am in awe with your commitment and leadership

We continue planning our participation and leadership role in the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) program — the $6.42B Medicaid Waiver program that will help transform healthcare delivery in NY State. We are on-track for our December 16th application deadline.

I’m please to say that we have taken on a leadership role in bringing together many of the large systems involved in this work. We have established collaborations with Performing Provider Systems (PPSs) across the city in order to work together to improve health of local communities. On October 9th, four PPSs – including the community partners and hospitals of the HHC, St. Barnabas, Maimonides, and Medisys systems — convened at the New York Academy of Medicine for a project planning conference. We also hosted four other sessions – in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan – with local hospitals and community partners who will jointly design the DSRIP projects for each borough. The sessions provided a terrific opportunity for teams from different organizations to begin building relationships, review recently-completed local community needs assessment data, and begin planning to transform NYC care delivery for five years and beyond.

In recognition of the 13th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, I want to again recognize our HHC colleagues who experienced deep personal loss 13 years ago and yet, in the proud HHC tradition of compassion, stood ready to serve New Yorkers who needed us. I also want to salute and thank the HHC team members of the World Trade Center Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital, Gouverneur Health and Elmhurst Hospital, who continue to help survivors overcome not just physical ailments associated with the events of 9/11, but also the mental health issues that can be similarly debilitating.

As we approach the 2nd anniversary of super storm Sandy which inflicted substantial damage to our facilities and residents of NY city, we will remiss if we can not once again acknowledge and celebrate the strength and bravery demonstrated by HHC staff in the face of such an unprecedented event. Our staff put their personal fears for the safety of their homes aside in their determination to keep patient needs first. We’ve come a long way since then, but much remains to be done.

Discussions and negotiations with FEMA are nearing an agreement on federal monies to restore and fortify the four Corporation facilities impacted by Hurricane Sandy: Coney Island Hospital, Bellevue, Coler, and Metropolitan.

Executive Vice-President Antonio Martin and Chief Financial Officer Marlene Zurack and their teams have led HHC’s efforts to come to a comprehensive agreement with FEMA, in which the state of New York acts as administrative intermediary.

We presented details of the proposed final agreement to officials of the City of New York in the last two weeks. The financial terms of the agreement currently are being reviewed and analyzed by the City’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). A “Letter of Undertaking” between HHC, FEMA, and the State of New York has been drafted for execution.

After these agreements are finalized, we will give the Board a full briefing about the FEMA agreement, the restoration plans it will cover, and our plans to manage the project.

New Yorkers may be very concerned about the Ebola virus, but there’s a virus that poses a much greater risk to our community: influenza – the flu. Every year, more than 2,000 New Yorkers die of flu and flu-related pneumonia. Even more are hospitalized. At greatest risk are the young, our seniors, pregnant women, anyone whose health is fragile and those who care for them. Vaccination is the best way to protect against influenza. Yet many do not get a flu shot despite how easy and accessible the vaccine is. Healthcare workers are at great risk, both for contracting this disease and for unknowingly passing it on to patients whose health is fragile.

This year, New York State is again enforcing the regulation that all healthcare personnel will be vaccinated against the flu. Those employees who are not vaccinated for any reason will need to wear a mask for the duration of the flu season, as announced by the State Health Commissioner. HHC fully supports this regulation and has again launched a strong campaign to encourage our staff to get vaccinated as soon as possible for the coming flu season. Last year’s final vaccination rate of 82% far exceeded any previous campaigns and this year we plan to bring up that number to include more staff. We will continue to ensure that all personnel understand our flu policy and are informed about how and where they can get vaccinated or how they can otherwise comply with the policy.

This week we announced the expansion of a program that allows doctors at Elmhurst and Bellevue to write fruit and vegetable “prescriptions” to children who are overweight or obese to help improve access to healthy food and promote overall health and wellness in the community. We first adopted the program last summer to help families served by Lincoln Hospital and Harlem Hospital. The Wholesome Wave Fruit and Vegetable Prescription program – called FVRx — proved successful in its first year by helping 40 percent of the children lower their Body Mass Index and we had more than half of the families reporting having more food to eat at home.

I think we’ve learned that sometimes a prescription for fresh food can be even better than a prescription for medicine. And when doctors do more than just ask patients to eat more fruits and vegetables – when they take concrete steps to make it easier for patients and go out of their way to demonstrate the benefits — patients really listen.

With our excellent primary care services and community collaborations like this one, we can help children learn at an early age that a healthy lifestyle and good food choices strongly affect their future health and wellbeing.

Before Congress left Washington, bills were introduced in the Senate and House to reauthorize the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 through 2041. The World Trade Health Center Program provides federal financial support to HHC’s WTC Environmental Health Program.

The Congressional session is scheduled to resume on November 11th, one week after the mid-term elections. It is not clear what legislative actions will be taken in this session. There is a need for the reauthorization of continued government funding since funds for many discretionary programs expire on December 11th.

In addition, the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee is drafting a bill to be considered this session that would address a call by the hospital industry for a more clear policy on short stays in hospitals, sometimes referred to as the “Two Midnights” issue. The draft also includes language that would allow socio-economic factors to be considered by CMS in levying Medicare readmission penalties. Unfortunately, there are likely to be other items in the bill that the hospital community will find problematic and oppose. That said, we have been told that hospital outpatient cuts (a proposal that we and others have opposed) would not be in bill language.

The House does not plan to take any action on the Medicare “Doc Fix,” also referred to as the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), which expires in March 2015. However, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden has said he wants to do a permanent SGR fix during this session.

Early this month, FEMA arranged for staff from the US Senate Appropriations Committee to visit Bellevue Hospital with a focus on the need for funding of resiliency efforts to ensure continued operations if there were another Hurricane Sandy magnitude occurrence. It was a productive visit, impressing upon the Senate staff the essentiality of Bellevue to the health care infrastructure of the City and the important collaboration occurring among FEMA, State, New York City and HHC. We continue to work with FEMA and State to finalize agreement concerning repair and mitigation funding for our facilities that were affected by Superstorm Sandy.

This week and last, I and Dr. Ross Wilson briefed several federal legislators on HHC’s preparedness for Ebola. These briefings have been very well received. We have also noted in these briefings that the cost of our extensive preparedness must be funded. We have emphasized that, in spite of HHC’s critical cash flow challenges, the City’s public hospital system has stepped up to the plate as we have always done.

HHC recognized National Depression Screening Day (NDSD) on October 9th when 15 of our hospitals and community based mental health clinics served as screening sites for depression, anxiety, PTSD and bipolar disorder. Our corporation is one of the largest organizations to participate in this program. This year, we screened more than 500 people on this day and referred 91 patients for further treatment. As with other illnesses, early detection of mental health disorders significantly improves the chances that an individual will receive appropriate treatment and therefore have a better quality of life. We are very proud of our role as one of the largest mental health providers in New York City and are truly committed to ensuring access to mental health services to children, adolescents and adults in every borough.

Two HHC leaders have been tapped by Governor Cuomo to support the state’s new program to reduce the number of new HIV infections to 750 per year by 2020. HHC Acting Chairperson, Dr. Jo Ivy Boufford, President of the New York Academy of Medicine and Terry Hamilton, our Director of HIV Services, were appointed by the governor to a special task force charged with implementing a three-point plan to end the AIDS epidemic in New York. The plan will focus on identifying people with HIV who remain undiagnosed and linking them to health care, retaining patients and getting them the right treatment, and providing access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for high-risk people to keep them HIV negative. HHC hospitals have a long history of successfully treating this disease and developing innovative testing methods that identify people with HIV and link them to healthcare. We applaud this statewide plan and are happy to provide leadership to make it a reality.

HHC will honor six nurses this month at the third annual Nursing Excellence Awards. The honorees were nominated by their colleagues for achievements in one of the following categories: Excellence in Home, Community, and Ambulatory Care; Professional Management; Volunteerism and Service; Excellence in Clinical Nursing, Inpatient; Education and Mentorship; and Advancing and Leading the Profession. I met the honorees last week and I salute their accomplishments and their leadership.

This year, for the second time, HHC will also honor an individual with the Nursing Champion award. HHC will present this award to photographer and filmmaker, Carolyn Jones, who has elevated the voices of nurses through her work. Ms. Jones began travelling the United States in 2012 to interview nurses for The American Nurse Project, which ultimately became a book as well as a feature-length documentary film. The film The American Nurse premiered during National Nurses’ Week 2014 and captures the indispensable role of nurses on the frontlines of today’s healthcare delivery. Over the past six months, through Ms. Jones’s generosity and support, we have arranged screenings of The American Nurse at numerous HHC facilities.

This year’s award recipients embody HHC’s Guiding Principles by always keeping patients first and pursuing excellence in the clinical, educational, and philanthropic spheres of the profession. The outstanding accomplishments of these honorees speak to the visionary leadership of HHC’s Chief Nurse Executive Lauren Johnston and her dedicated staff. Under Ms. Johnston’s progressive direction, our nurses are playing a critical role in transforming HHC into a truly-patient centered system. As a nurse herself, she serves as a role model for the awardees and all of the nurses across HHC.

I hope members of the Board will join me in celebrating our excellent nurses at the event.

Earlier this month, I had the honor to join in the celebration of the 175th anniversary of Lincoln Medical Center. Hosted by the hospital Auxiliary, the Gala event at Marina Del Rey gathered together many hospital staff and community organizations to pay tribute to over 800 nurses at Lincoln — compassionate and dedicated professionals whose courage and determination serve as role models in the nursing industry. This was a perfect way to acknowledge the long and proud history of Lincoln’s service to the community since it was founded back in 1839, as well as its many recent accomplishments, which have positioned Lincoln as a premier health care institution serving the South Bronx. I am grateful to the many auxiliary members and other volunteers who have also served and important role in the history of this important HHC institution. Congratulations to Lincoln for 175 years of providing compassionate care to the community.

Last week, Matilde L. Roman, Senior Director of HHC’s Office of Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services/Limited English Proficiency (CLAS/LEP) participated on a panel at the Healthcare Language Services Summit sponsored by Cyracom. Her presentation, Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity in New York City focused on the critical role HHC plays in promoting health equity, eliminating health and healthcare disparities through culturally responsive care and language services. This is a critical part of our providing meaningful access to safe, affordable healthcare in New York City.

HHC’s Office of CLAS/LEP was established in 2007 to provide expert resources to support Network, facility and frontline efforts to implement best practices and improve the delivery of language services and culturally competent and responsive care across the enterprise.

Last Sunday, I joined about 1,200 HHC staff members across New York City as they participated in the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. This walk marked the twelfth year that HHC served as a flagship sponsor of the event to help end breast cancer.

So far this year, HHC has raised about $125,000 for ACS and is on track to reach last year’s total of more than $200,000. According to ACS’s Kris Kim, Executive Vice President and Eastern Division Operating Officer, HHC and our amazing teams of walkers were the highlight of this year’s Making Strides. She extended her thanks to Dr. Martha Sullivan, Ann Frisch, Joe Schick, and all the Team Captains and HHC participants for their engagement in Making Strides.

I want to extend a special thanks to Duane Chandler, Assistant Director, Internal Communications Group, and Rafael Dominguez, Director of Marketing and Communications for HHC’s Health and Home Care. Their organizational savvy and enthusiasm helped to advance HHC’s fundraising efforts this year. Please also join me in also thanking all of the HHC staff who participated in the Making Strides walks or made a donation to ACS to help end the fight against breast cancer.

As customary, this month I want to bring your attention to a remarkable program at our corporation. This one has become a national medical training model that prepares our staff to respond to the challenges they meet every single day.

When we decided to reopen the Ob services at NCB it was not just hiring experienced and talented staff….. it is not just sprucing up the place…. it is not just about buying the right equipment…. after doing all these we need to create a team…. a team of professionals…. team of compassionate providers into a Team of talented providers. However great their skills are….however knowledgeable they are…. The medicine demands to work as a team …. a team that consistently and flawlessly produce good outcomes for our patients.

We use our nationally renowned simulation center to create a team …we did what talented professionals always do…….they practice, practice and practice more. That is what we did before opening our OB services at NCB.

I’m speaking of our Institute for Medical Simulation and Advanced Learning — known as IMSAL. This training institute uses state-of-the art medical simulation technology and teaching methods to improve clinical learning, patient care and patient safety in our system. IMSAL helps our healthcare professionals function as high-performing clinical teams in a wide variety of realistic medical scenarios in staged clinical environments like the ICU, OR or ED. Our Cutting edge simulation equipment includes a family of high-fidelity patient mannequins make the practice sessions feel so much like the real thing. By practicing procedures and engaging in teamwork scenarios in a controlled environment, our medical and nursing professionals hone the clinical, communication and collaborative skills they need to reduce medical errors and make patient safety a priority.

Since we opened the simulation center in the Jacobi Hospital campus, we had over 9,000 trainings and our trainings have evolved into two tracks. We continue to provide teaching sessions in the center… where staff can practice specific skills like central line placements, airway management, cardiac arrest protocols, and much more under controlled simulated environment. More recently, we have extended the learning and are bringing simulation to where the learners are …. To the environment where care is delivered…..right inside our healthcare facilities.

Under the leadership of Director Katie Walker, RN, this program has proven to be one of the most valuable resource we have to help elevate our standards of safety for our patients and build opportunities for our staff to master the skills they need to achieve excellence.

Most recently, IMSAL has had a very prominent role in helping prepare for the reopening of the Labor and Delivery unit at North Central Bronx. They led team-building birthing simulation exercises among the new doctors, nurses, midwives and other members of the care team who will be working together for the first time. From its inception, IMSAL was designed to emphasize team training. After all, healthcare is a team sport and every team needs to practice.

And since July, we tapped our IMSAL team to play a vital role in our Ebola preparedness. They created simulation exercises and scripted “secret shopper” patients who visited our emergency departments to test our ability to identify a potential case of Ebola and quickly follow the robust standards we have put in place. Most of these secret shoppers were IMSAL staff and medical simulation instructors who were able to observe and debrief our staff to help them learn and be ready to safely treat an Ebola patient without exposing healthcare staff and other New Yorkers to danger. I’m happy to report that those secret shopper scenarios confirmed our staff’s readiness for the task. And the IMSAL team continues to have a leading role in our continued Ebola training activity.

Please help me thank Katie Walker and the Institute for Medical Simulation and Advanced Learning team.

And now I want to introduce one of the workers in this remarkable learning center. She is someone who brings both passion and high level of technical training to our organization. She played an active and leadership role in our medical simulation efforts at both North Central Bronx Hospital and Ebola preparations.

This person has personally been part of over 1,000 simulation training classes and amazingly has given birth to more than 200 babies in the last two years. Shockingly, all the deliveries have turned out to be complex….. either shoulder dystocia cases or involved post-partum hemorrhaging. All accept one…. that is. Her real baby, Kaitlyn, was born in May of 2013.

I’m speaking of Jessica Pohlman, Senior Simulation Specialist and Associate Director of Education at the HHC Institute for Medical Simulation and Advanced Learning.

Jessica is a Nationally Registered Paramedic who despite her demanding training schedule at IMSAL finds the time to work 2 or 3 shifts per month as a paramedic to keep her clinical skills sharp. She has extensive experience in education, and holds adjunct faculty appointments at New York Medical College and Rockland Community College. She has BA, a Masters in Public Administration, and is currently working on a Masters in Homeland Security.

If you’ve met Jessica, you will know that she’s an amazing ambassador for medical simulation and for our corporation. Although she is young to HHC and has been with us only four and a half years, Jessica has already made many contributions to our organization. She believes in the power of teaching and continuous learning….she is a true advocate for team decision-making, which she says reinforces good habits. And we all agree.

Recently Jessica was seen as the patient in a New York Times video featuring IMSAL and our NCB .

Now, I will let the New York Times tell the story …. The story our IMSAL …. story of our leadership in medical simulation …..the story of our journey creating teams to make our patients safe

Video

Thank you, Jessica. Thank you IMSAL team.

HHC President Talks City’s Ebola Preps, Dr. Ram Raju, President, NY1 Inside City Hall, 10/10/14

This is How New York City is Preparing for Ebola, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, CNN “New Day”, 10/9/14

HHC Ebola Preparedness, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, NY1 News-The Call, 10/16/14

HHC Ebola Preparedness Press Conference, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Nate Link, Medical Director, Bellevue, NY1 , WNYC Radio, WPIX11, WNBC, Fox 5, WCBS/CBS880/1010WINS, 10/9/14

NYC wants to prevent Ebola hysteria, Bellevue, FOX5, 10/17/14

City, State Agencies Prep for Potential Ebola Cases, Bellevue, NY1, 10/17/14

HHC Ebola response and preparation, Dr. Maurice Wright, Chief Medical Officer, Harlem, WBLS-FM, 10/21/14

HHC’s Take Care New York, Dr. Ram Raju, President, News 12 Bronx, 10/8/14

An Interview with HHC CEO Dr. Ram Raju, City & State TV, 9/18/14

EMS Reunion at Jacobi Medical Center, News 12 Bronx, 9/22/14

Stand Up to Violence, Guns Down Life up, News 12 Bronx, 9/24/14

Breast Cancer Making Strides, Dr. Kathie-Ann Joseph, Bellevue, WABC, 10/4/14

Doris Fogie’s 100th Birthday, Elmhurst Hospital, NY1, 10/5/14

North Central Bronx Hospital Set to Reopen Maternity Unit, NY1, News 12 Bronx, 10/5/14

HHC’s Response to Ebola Preparedness

On The Alert For Ebola, Texas Hospital Still Missed First Case, Dr. Ross Wilson, Corporate Chief Medical Officer, Dr Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, NPR, 10/1/14

Actors Fake Ebola Symptoms to Test City Hospitals, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer WNYC, 10/2/14

Is New York City prepared for possible Ebola outbreak? Health experts, city officials weigh in, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, New York Daily News, 10/2/14

New York City Steps Up Preparations to Be Ready for Ebola Cases, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, The New York Times, 10/5/14

Ebola: Let Cooler Heads Prevail, William Walsh, SVP, North Bronx Healthcare Network, Dr. Yvette Calderon, Editorial: The Bronx Chronicle, 10/2/14

NYC Area Hospital, Airport Workers Seek More Training, HHC, The Wall Street Journal, 10/15/14 (Also covered by WNYC Radio, USA Today)

Amid Concern About Ebola Virus in U.S., New York Hospital Says It’s Ready for the Worst, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, The New York Times, 10/9/14 (Also covered in New York Post, Crain’s New York Business, El Diario, New York Daily News)

Ebola prep includes undercover actors for disease that may never come, Dr. Ram Raju, President, Dr. Ross Wilson, Chief Medical Officer, HHC, Associated Press, 10/7/14

New York Hospitals Prep for Ebola, Dr. Ross Wilson, HHC Chief Medical Officer, The Wall Street Journal, 10/7/14 (Also covered in Capital New York and Crain’s New York Business)

Queens hospitals on high alert for Ebola virus, HHC Elmhurst and Queens Hospitals, Times Ledger, 10/9/14

Bellevue Hospital to Be a Focus if Ebola Hits New York, The New York Times, 10/14/14 (Also covered in Crain’s/Bloomberg, New York Daily News, Times, Modern Healthcare)

Strict 911, hospital protocols take effect in NYC amid Ebola fears, Dr. Ram Raju, President, Bellevue, New York Daily News, 10/18/14

Editorial: Ebola Update: The Sky Is Not Falling, Jacobi, NCBH, Dr. Ram Raju, President, William Walsh, SVP, NBHN, The Bronx Chronicle, 10/16/14

Other print coverage

Doctors open wallets to gain currency in city politics, HHC, Crain’s New York Business, 9/15/14

Oddo envisions “health and wellness campus” with housing, services for the disabled and seniors at Sea View, Dr. Ram Raju, President, Staten Island Advance, 9/16/14

City to provide logistical help to undocumented, HHC, Capital New York, 9/16/14

Opinion: A Routine Screening That Could Save Your Life: Preventing Suicide in Primary Care, Dr. Damara Gutnick, Bellevue, Huffington Post, 9/18/14

New York ACOs Share Savings, HHC ACO, Crain’s Health Pulse, 9/18/14

Queens Hospital Center nurses promote breastfeeding benefits, Zenaida Magnaye-Banzon, RN, Associate Executive Director, Queens, Nurse.com, 9/19/14

HHC Rebuilds Health Center, Coney Island, Crain’s Health Pulse, 9/23/14

How to Talk to Kids and Teens About Mental Illness , Dr. Cathryn Galanter, Director, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program, SUNY Downstate/Kings County, US News & World Report online, 9/23/14

Agency Focus: HHC Budget Analysis, City and State, 9/22/14

Nurses take the wheel, drive retention efforts, Joan Gabriele, MA, RN, Deputy Executive Director for Patient Care Services/CNO, Queens, Reggie Atangan, RN, Assistant Head Nurse, Queens, Heather Smith-Dixon, BSN, RN, Queens, Nurse.com, 9/15/14

Harlem-based nonprofit donates wigs to cancer patients at Metropolitan Hospital Center, New York Daily News, 10/2/14 (Also covered by DNAinfo.com)

Youth drama, talk of economic issues launches Staten Island Health and Wellness Expo, Dr. Ram Raju, President, SILive.com, 10/2/14

City HHC Urges New Yorkers to “Move To Improve” Their Health, Dr. Machelle Allen, HHC Deputy Chief Medical Officer, MetroPlus, NYCaribNews.com, 10/4/14

How the state defines ‘financially stable’, Capital New York, 10/2/14

Bassett vaccinates Council members, for flu awareness, HHC, Capital New York, 10/2/14

Elmhurst Hospital volunteer is celebrated for a milestone in life and long-time community service, Victor Snyder, Director of Social Work, Jayne Maerker, Director of Volunteer Services, New York Daily News, 10/7/14

Labor and Delivery unit at North Central Bronx Hospital is back in action, New York Daily News, 10/7/14

Patients suffering from asthma make up nearly a quarter of Harlem Hospital’s emergency room visits, Dr. Maurice Wright, Medical Director, Harlem, Dr. Raji Ayinla, Chief of Pulmonary Medicine, Harlem, North Central Bronx, New York Daily News, 10/8/14

Making Queens A Baby Friendly Borough, Queens Hospital Center, Dr. Marcy Stein Albert, Director of Pediatrics, Zenaida Magnaye-Banzon, Associate Executive Director, Women and Children Services, Queens Tribune, 10/16/14

Elmhurst Hospital will start handing out prescriptions for fruit and vegetables to some of its young patients, Dr. Ram Raju, President, Harlem, Lincoln, New York Daily News, 10/19/14 (Also covered in Harlem World)

HHC Take Care NY Campaign, El Diario, 10/1/14

To Become a Doctor, Woodhull Medical Center, The New York Times, 10/9/14

Editorial: Paging Dr. Obama, Dr. Ram Raju, President, New York Daily News, 10/16/14