TD Bank supports St. Francis’s expansion of services for the Queens and AAPI communities

As St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center® successfully expands its clinical care into Queens via the Cardiac Interventional Group (CIG) clinic, leaders have identified one challenge: getting patients to appointments.

The CIG clinic in Fresh Meadows provides the local community with St. Francis quality care in interventional cardiac procedures and coronary imaging and helps provide wider access to health care in the predominantly Korean and Chinese communities of eastern Queens. Still, some local residents were not visiting because they did not have transportation.

TD Bank stepped in through their TD Ready Commitment, designed to level the playing field and break down barriers to make health care accessible. TD Bank’s generous philanthropic donation provides free bus transportation to and from appointments and treatments at both the CIG clinic and St. Francis Hospital. The gift also provides a health care navigator who speaks Mandarin or Korean to help schedule appointments, sign up for Medicaid and ensure that patients get prescriptions from their local pharmacy.

The donation also funds translation services so patients can receive medical care instructions in their first language, and charity care for medical services for patients without health insurance.

“We are grateful to TD Bank for their gift that will be used to support so many patients in the Queens area,” said St. Francis Hospital President Charles L. Lucore, MD, MBA.

Both CIG clinic Interventional Cardiologist Chong Park, MD, and Director of Queens Outreach Kathleen Kim have helped, and will continue to help, the clinic provide quality medical care to local residents.

“We are thrilled to support this expansion of services that will ease some of the burdens felt by patients in our community,” said TD Bank’s Emmet Conlon, head of health care.