Author Archives: Jacob Labosco

MediSys Health Network Named a Top Hospital for Fair Share Spending by the Lown Institute

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A female doctor smiling.The MediSys Health Network has been named as one of the top 10 hospital systems in the United States for fair share spending by the Lown Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes equity and transparency throughout the American healthcare system. MediSys was one of many hospital systems across the country included in the Lown Institute’s 2024-25 fair share analysis, which compared hospitals’ tax exemptions to their community spending.

Only 20% of the 2,425 nonprofit hospitals included in the analysis (including MediSys) had a fair share surplus, meaning that their spending on community-focused initiatives surpassed the total value of their tax exemptions. Both Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and Flushing Hospital Medical Center were also listed individually as hospitals with a fair share surplus.

We’re proud of the work performed each day by our teams at both Jamaica and Flushing Hospital to provide high-quality care to the Queens community, as well as the various community initiatives and programs created to ensure that this care is as comprehensive and accessible as possible. Thank you for all that you do, and congratulations for achieving this national recognition.

Jamaica Hospital Hosts 2024 Annual Art Exhibit

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Members of the Creative Arts Therapy staff at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center's 2024 Annual Art Exhibit.Jamaica Hospital recently hosted its 2024 Annual Art Exhibit from March 4th to March 8th, showcasing a variety of creations from art therapy patients and faculty. Each year, the art exhibit displays a collection patient artwork from throughout the previous year. Some of the artwork featured this year included drawings, paintings, mixed media, and sculptures. The title for this year’s art exhibit was “A Space for Hope.”

“We decided on this theme because we wanted to bring the idea that having hope is still possible during difficult times,” said Michelle Anne Hololob, Director of the Creative Art Therapy Internship and Externship Training Program at Jamaica Hospital. “The last several years have been filled with such unrest, illness, fear and anger; more than ever, the world feels unbalanced. This theme allowed for patients to create a space in their minds where things could be better and don’t have to stay the same; we can still hope for change.”

Most of the pieces featured at the Art Exhibit were created by patients at Jamaica Hospital during the course of their treatment. In one particular case, a patient who had heard about the show after their discharge asked for their post-discharge artwork to be displayed as a showcase of the emotional regulation they found through art-making.

One particular piece noted by Hololob was a collection of 1,000 folded paper cranes; in Japanese culture, these are referred to as “senbazuru,” which are believed to grant a wish or bring hope to a person. “We collectively folded 1,000 paper cranes as a statement of hope for the hospital,” said Hololob. “These cranes fly as a symbol to our patients and staff that, as long as we have a little hope, things in life can get better.”

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s art exhibit. We look forward to seeing what our patients and staff create next year!

Jamaica Hospital Wins CAPC New York City Tipping Point Challenge

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The logo for The Joh A. Hartford Foundation Tipping Point Challenge.Jamaica Hospital Medical Center has been named a winner in New York City Tipping Point Challenge. This year-long clinical training competition, funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation and sponsored by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) and the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, was established to help healthcare organizations improve the quality of services for people living with serious illnesses. Jamaica Hospital was one of five hospitals in New York City to win this competition.

During this year’s competition, participating NYC-based healthcare organizations were able compete on both the local level and the national level in the Clinical Training category. In this category, participants must achieve the greatest number of CAPC course completions during the timeframe of the competition. Alternatively, they must achieve the greatest number of course completions since becoming a member organization.

“As a CAPC member organization, all Jamaica Hospital Medical Center clinicians were able to take full advantage of CAPC’s online clinical training curriculum,” said Brynn Bowman, CEO of CAPC, and Lauren Green Weisenfeld, Deputy Director of the Healthy Aging Program at the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, in a joint statement. “Over the past year, both palliative care and non-palliative care clinicians across your organization enhanced their skills in communication, pain and symptom management, and support for the all-important family caregiver.”

We congratulate and thank Jamaica Hospital’s palliative care team for making this achievement possible. We look forward to seeing your continued work in providing high-quality palliative care.

Flushing Hospital Receives Gold Safe Sleep Certification from Cribs for Kids

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Flushing Hospital Medical Center has been recognized by the National Safe Sleep Hospital Certification Program as a Gold-level Safe Sleep Hospital for their commitment to best practices and education on infant sleep safety. It is currently the only New York City hospital outside of the city’s public hospital system (NYC Health + Hospitals) that has achieved this certification level. Previously, Flushing Hospital held Bronze-level certification since 2016.

The National Safe Sleep Hospital Certification Program was created by Cribs for Kids, a national infant sleep safety organization that works with healthcare organizations to prevent infant sleep-related deaths due to sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) and accidental suffocation.

As a Nationally Certified Gold-level Safe Sleep Hospital, Flushing Hospital is recognized for following safe sleep guidelines recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and providing training programs for healthcare team members and family caregivers. Requirements for achieving Gold-level certification include:

  • Implementing hospital-wide Infant Safe Sleep Policy
  • Promoting safe sleep education on the hospital website
  • Promoting hospital-wide infant safe sleep imagery
  • Providing safe sleep training to staff caring for infants for more than one year
  • Providing safe sleep education to family/caregivers of infant for more than one year
  • Identifying families needing a safe sleep space and providing resources
  • Implementing Quality Improvement measures based on compliance audits
  • Using and/or gifting wearable blankets, or assigning Cribs for Kids Hospital-Wide Training Module to every hospital employee
  • Engaging in at least two community outreach initiatives to educate the community on infant sleep safety

In the process of meeting and staying up to date with these requirements, some of the specific infant sleep safety initiatives implemented by Flushing Hospital include:

  • Hourly rounds to monitor baby safety
  • Instruction of medical staff, patients, and families on putting babies to sleep safely
  • Community outreach, including educational events in the hospital lobby and clinics
  • Educating and providing sleep sacks (which reduce the risk of strangulation or suffocation of babies) to patients

“Flushing Hospital consistently strives to educate parents and our community on how to provide the safest sleep environment for their babies,” said Maria DeMarinis Smilios, Director of Nursing – Maternal and Child Services at Flushing Hospital. “We feel this most recent Gold-level designation demonstrates our commitment to that goal.”

We thank everyone at Flushing Hospital who made this achievement possible and for their work to make our hospital the safest environment possible for newborns and their families.

Schwartz Rounds Return at Flushing Hospital Medical Center and Jamaica Hospital

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Healthcare professionals and leadership at FHMC attending a Schwartz Rounds panel discussion.On November 23, 2023, 152 staff members at Flushing Hospital Medical Center attended the first Schwartz Rounds event held since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The panel discussion included attending physicians, residents, nurses, and social workers, all of whom shared challenges they experienced with building trust and meeting family expectations in cases with unexpected outcomes.

The Schwartz Rounds program offers our healthcare providers a regularly-scheduled time during their fast-paced work lives to openly and honestly discuss social and emotional issues they face while caring for patients and their families. Unlike traditional medical rounds, these discussions focus on shared experiences, thoughts, and feelings centered around thought-provoking topics drawn from actual patient cases. The goal of the program is to provide caregivers with a greater ability to make personal connections with patients and colleagues by offering greater insight into one another’s responses and feelings.

Panelists from diverse disciplines participate in the sessions. After listening to a brief presentation on a particular case or topic, caregivers in the audience are invited to share their own perspectives and discuss broader related issues. Participants in Schwartz Rounds report that the honesty and vulnerability involved in these discussions help them to feel less isolated in their own experiences.

Our Schwartz Rounds committee members thank everyone for their participation in this first panel discussion and invite all employees to attend future rounds throughout 2024. These rounds will take place on 3/14, 6/27, 9/26 and 12/19. Additional rounds will also take place at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center on 1/19, 4/19, 7/26, and 10/25.

If you have any questions about Schwartz Rounds, please contact Oksana Galibova, the Program Coordinator for Schwartz Rounds and Network Director of Person-Centered Services, by sending an email to ogalibov@jhmc.org.

Jamaica Hospital Nursing Home Reduces Patient Medications Through Partnership With United Hospital Fund

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Jamaica Hospital Nursing Home, along with six other New York nursing homes, participated in a partnership with the United Hospital Fund (UHF) to tackle the issue of polypharmacy, the practice of prescribing an excessively high number of medications to long-term care residents. The initiative aims to reduce health risks of overprescribing for residents through a process called “deprescribing,” or decreasing the usage of inappropriate or ineffective medications.

A report assessing the results of the partnership, Reducing the Risk: Year 1 Report of the Polypharmacy in Nursing Homes Learning Collaborative, showed that participating nursing homes reduced the average number of medications prescribed to patients from approximately 11 to 9. The number of residents taking 10 or more medications also decreased across all participating facilities by 16%.

Deprescribing efforts focused on reducing medications that provided limited benefits and increased patients’ risk of experiencing harmful side effects, such as dizziness and falling. Jamaica Hospital Nursing Home specifically worked to deprescribe antihypertensives, proton pump inhibitors, and multivitamins.

“Antihypertensives and proton pump inhibitors are used very frequently in most nursing homes and hospitals,” said Louis Kaplan, the Assistant Director of Pharmacy at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, who monitored the rate at which the targeted medications were prescribed to residents. “We suspected that it may not be necessary to continue their use for many of our patients.” Kaplan added that multivitamins were also targeted by the nursing home’s deprescribing efforts because of the sufficient nutrition patients already receive through their regular meals, making these supplements redundant in many cases.

Dr. Kaushik Doshi, the Medical Director of Jamaica Hospital Nursing Home, worked with doctors, pharmacists, and nursing staff to incorporate safe deprescribing guidelines from the UHF into the nursing home’s standard patient care practices. A key aspect of this initiative involved the introduction of helpful educational tools, such as electronic medical record alerts indicating whether the targeted medications were appropriate to prescribe continuously for certain patients.

“Physicians can be hesitant to stop medications, even when there’s no clear indication that they’re necessary beyond a certain point,” said Dr. Doshi. “This is an aspect of healthcare that needs to change, not only here, but across all facilities and organizations.”

Jamaica Hospital is proud of the results achieved through this partnership and congratulates everyone who participated in this initiative for the work they’ve done so far. We look forward to seeing the continuing impact of these practices for our patients and care provider teams in the future.

Jamaica Hospital Receives “A” Rating for Social Responsibility from the Lown Institute

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Jamaica Hospital Medical Center was one of 39 hospitals in New York to receive an “A” rating for social responsibility from the Lown Institute, a nonprofit think tank that advocates for equitable treatment and services among healthcare organizations. This rating is the highest awarded by the Institute.

Social responsibility ratings are given to hospitals across the country. Out of the 39 institutions given A ratings in New York, 22 (including Jamaica Hospital) were located in the New York City metropolitan area. Among all hospitals ranked for social responsibility in New York, Jamaica Hospital ranked ninth.

Hospital ratings are based on more than 50 metrics focused on elements such as pay equity, community benefits, cost efficiency, and patient outcomes. Historically, many New York hospitals have struggled to achieve an A rating for social responsibility; this is partially due to difficulties with pay equity amidst the constantly-rising cost of living in New York City and other parts of the state.

Overall, Jamaica Hospital was rated A in Equity (which reflects a commitment to inclusion and community health), A in Value (which reflects the avoidance of low-value services and an emphasis on cost-efficiency), and B in Outcomes (which reflects performance in relation to patient health and care experiences). The hospital scored particularly high in a few key metrics, such as Community Benefit (which measures the extent of a hospital’s investment in community health) and Avoiding Overuse (which measures the avoidance of inappropriate tests and procedures that offer little or no clinical benefit).

Thank you to everyone at Jamaica Hospital for the work you’ve done to earn us this accolade!

Jamaica Hospital Provides On-Site Services at Jamaica Jams 2023

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Jamaica Hospital Medical Center recently participated in the 2023 Jamaica Arts & Music Summer Festival (Jamaica Jams), an annual event that promotes family, senior, and youth-centered activities and showcases the diverse cultural talents, foods, and arts of the Queens community.

Jamaica Jams draws an estimated 150,000 people to the area’s central business district each year, stretching across 10 blocks of Jamaica Avenue between Parsons Boulevard and 170th Street. Jamaica Hospital was stationed in the Healthfirst Pavilion, located on 165th Street between Archer Avenue and Jamaica Avenue, which is primarily designated for senior health and wellness.

Teams from several of Jamaica Hospital’s departments provided a variety of on-site services during the event, including:

  • Nutrition counseling
  • Vascular screening and education
  • Trauma prevention education
  • Podiatry screening
  • Mental health and wellness education
  • Mindfulness and exercise Information
  • Blood pressure screening
  • Pulse oximetry screening
  • Respiratory and asthma education
  • Dental and oral screening

We were also joined at this year’s event by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. This team provided genetic risk assessment screenings and educational information.

All of us at Jamaica Hospital are thrilled to have been able to participate in this year’s Jamaica Jams. We look forward to seeing our community at this event next year!

MediSys Health Network Congratulates Research Day Winners

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Jamaica Hospital and Flushing Hospital Medical Center recently held their Annual Research Conference and Poster Competition, during which members of each hospital showcased research and scholarly activity completed during the academic year. Over 200 attendees participated in the event. Additionally, there were more than 120 submissions between both hospitals.

This is the second time Research Day has been held as a formal, hospital-wide event. This year, it was sponsored by the Department of Research Education and Innovation and the Department of Clinical Research.

The posters featured as part of this event focused on rare or interesting clinical cases and data collected from ongoing studies or quality improvement initiatives within our health system. Many of them were presented at conferences throughout the past year by residents, fellows, faculty, or staff members representing our hospital network in the scientific community, though some were designed specifically for this event.

At Jamaica Hospital, the first-place winner for Case Reports was “Isolated Left Ventricular Noncompaction Cardiomyopathy Presenting with Atrial Fibrillation” by Tetyana Okan, Homayoon Lodeen, Saliman Esmati, and Kaushik Doshi, as well as “Empiric Treatment with High Suspicion: A Rare Case of GAD-65 Autoimmune Encephalitis” by J. Smith, Ateaya Lima, Soniya Marwaha, and M. Anise.

The first-place poster for Empirical Research was “A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of the Pilot Veto Intervention: Barriers and Facilitators to the Enrollment and Retention of GSW Patients in a Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program” by Naa Djama Attoh-Okine, Ariel Cebelinski, and N. Addasi.

The winning Quality Improvement poster at Jamaica Hospital was “Post-Pulmonary Embolism Care at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center: A Quality Improvement Project” by Faria Nitol, M. Raja, H. Li, Fabiano Das Gracas, and Craig Thurm.

At Flushing Hospital, the first-place winning poster for Case Reports was “Staphylococcus Pasteuri Neonatal Sepsis” by Tashalee McGrath-Blagrove, L.Q. Lew, and Esra Fakioglu.

For Empirical Research, the first-place winner was “Using Latent Class Analysis to Identify Differences in Clinical Presentation, Functional Status, and Healthcare Service Use” by Abdi Deressa, Ashraf Sliem, Andrew Miele, A. Spinelli, M. McDonald, R. Jonathan Robitsek, Robert Mendelson, and Kelly Cervellione, as well as “Utilization of Osteopathic Manipulation Treatment in Wound Healing of Pressure Ulcers: A Pilot Study” by C. Bodden, Stephens Griner, M.A. Louis, M. Khan, Samantha Yasin, H. Rao, A. Khan, and P. Sawhney.

For Quality Improvement, the winning poster was “Evaluating the Long-Term Impact of Standardizing the Sign Out Process” by Taikchan Lildar, Falak Sana, W. Thu, Andrew Miele, Kelly Cervellione, and Tamar Toronjadze.

Congratulations to all Research Day winners, and thank you to everyone who participated in this event!

Jamaica Hospital Receives Baby-Friendly Hospital Re-Designation

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Jamaica Hospital Medical Center has been re-designated as a Baby-Friendly hospital. The designating organization, Baby-Friendly USA, works throughout the United States to uphold standards of optimal care set by the global Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) for breastfeeding-related services and education in hospitals and birthing centers.

The Baby-Friendly designation requires that hospitals educate both clinical and non-clinical staff to the extent that is most appropriate for their department and position. Additionally, they are required to implement policies and provide resources to accommodate healthy breastfeeding practices for new mothers.

“This re-designation attests to the fact that we are continuing to adhere to those standards,” said Marge Lilienthal, Director of Nursing, Behavioral Health, and Women and Children’s Services at Jamaica Hospital. Lilienthal worked with key individuals across a wide variety of departments covering inpatient and outpatient services to coordinate and organize the initiatives responsible for earning the hospital this prestigious designation.

At Jamaica Hospital, adherence to Baby-Friendly USA’s Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding (the broad framework that guides the BFHI) is overseen by the Interdisciplinary Breastfeeding Committee.  This group includes nurses, physicians, midwives, and lactation specialists, as well as representation from STORK clinical informatics/IT, professional development, and administrative staff.  The committee reviews data on a monthly basis, evaluating current breastfeeding initiatives and implementing corrective actions as needed.

Since first being designated as a Baby-Friendly hospital in 2017, Jamaica Hospital has evolved its approach to breastfeeding-related care. “One of our most significant improvements has been to standardize our approach to breastfeeding and feeding education across the continuum of prenatal and neonatal care,” said Lilienthal. “We also continue to improve our relationship with community agencies, which is very important to the care we provide and to ensuring the continuity of support to our patients and families.”

Jamaica Hospital partners with community agencies to provide additional breastfeeding support to new mothers. Some of these agencies include:

  • Chocolate Milk Café
  • Baby Café of Brownsville
  • Healthy Start
  • Public Health Solutions
  • New York Lactation Consultant Association
  • Citywide Doula Initiative

Additionally, the hospital provides support for breastfeeding mothers through the Jamaica Hospital WIC Program, the Women’s Health Center, and the 24/7 Breastfeeding Warmline, which can be reached at (929) 356-9809.