Executive Notes

Norwalk Hospital Medical Affairs Update

Lewis Berman, MD
VPMA Norwalk Hospital

Since opening in January, the new Bauer Emergency Department has experienced a spike in volume. Despite the increased visits, we’ve received an unprecedented number of laudatory letters and amazingly high Press-Ganey scores from our patients. Congratulations to Drs. Greenblatt and Hammel and the whole ED team for such a seamless transition!

The Medical Staff Advisory Council met on February 2, 2016. At the meeting, Rowena Bergmans, Vice President of Population Health, and Jason Orlinick, Chairman of Medicine, discussed the Medicare Bundled Payment Care Improvement Project and how the Network and Hospital are participating. Joe Carofano, Vice President of Marketing, gave a preview of the Network’s brand launch. There was interesting dialog about the branding campaign and discussion about the limitations that Stark law places on the ability of the Network to market individual physicians.

The Primary Care Physician Summit met on February 3, 2016. The PCPs felt that, in general, access and communication to subspecialists had improved since the prior Primary Care Physician Summit. In further discussion, the PCPs requested that the Hospital help provide better access to outpatient palliative and behavioral health care and specialty care for Medicaid patients.

Dr. Damanjeet Chaubey has been appointed as Network Medical Director for Palliative Care. Initial projects will include strengthening inpatient palliative care and expanding the palliative care services currently available at the Whittingham Cancer Center. The Palliative Care program will be offering an all-day program on “Principles of Palliative and End of Life Care for the Generalist” on June 8, 2016 from 8 am – 5 pm. Completion of this program, coupled with several web based activities, will lead to a Certificate of Completion.

The search for a new Chair of Surgery is in full swing. The Search Committee, comprised of Drs. John Bernie, Paul Gagne, Mike Lynch, Eric Kitain, Yoni Barnhard, Jason Orlinick, Lew Berman, PA Ginny Hilton, and Mike Daglio is in the midst of the first round of interviews.

BACK TO EXECUTIVE NOTES

Click here to return to the top of the page