GREATER NEW HAVEN HEALTHCARE HEROS 2013

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January 2013

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spatial limitations create Healthcare Hero St. Vincent’s Health Services congratulates winner Dr. Bruce Koeppen on his a challenge to visionary present the leadership of Quinnipiac’s Frank H. Netter MD School preferred right alignedof Medicine. tagline lockup.

We also congratulate and thank our staff members for their commitment to improving healthcare for area residents and making possible this Community Service Award for St. Vincent’s.

Logos should always be surrounded by an area of A healthy community starts isolation, or clear space. A with a healthy commitment. typical designation for clear That’s why we applaud Business New Haven’s 2009 Healthcare Heroes. space around any identifier is Their vision and leadership improve the quality of life in our community. equal to 3X the height between After all, a healthy community is everyone’s responsibility. We believe all of us working together can help to make our community stronger … the top of the TD shield and the better … healthier. top of the “T” in TD. This is And we’re just committed to doing our part. indicated by the shaded area in the examples to the left.

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You put your heart into helping others

and it shows.

Congratulations to this year’s Health Care Heroes, outstanding professionals who are improving lives throughout Greater New Haven. We are proud to honor your achievements in the health care field.

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Heroes for Life Publisher Mitchell Young Editor Michael C. Bingham Art Director Terry Wells Advertising Manager Mary W. Beard Senior Publisher’s Representative Roberta Harris Publisher’s Representative Daniel Bennick Robin Ungarp Contributors Felicia Hunter John Mordecai Melissa Nicefaro Priscilla Searles Karen Singer Tom Violante Photography Lisa Wilder Tom Violante Graphic Design Assistant Ashley Brown Healthcare Heroes 201: Publshed January 2013 in Business New Haven and New Haven magazine. Online at www.conntact.com Business New Haven is a publication of Second Wind Media, Ltd., with offices at 20 Grand Avenue, New Haven, CT 06513.

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M

eet the Health Care Heroes Class of 2013.

They are doctors, nurses, educators, researchers, administrators, volunteers. They come from many different places and backgrounds, and taken as a whole their career paths have defined many twists and turns. What they have in common is a profound respect and even veneration for the value of human life, and have devoted not just their careers, but their lives, to improving and preserving it.

One of these is Jon Soderstrom, the would-be minister who instead ended up spearheading the commercialization of research out of historically reluctant Yale and its school of medicine. The work of Soderstrom and his colleagues at the university’s Office of Cooperative Research was spawned dozens of new companies pioneering new innovations and medicines that help improve the quality of life — and in some cases, save lives — in patients across the globe.

Speaking of medical schools, this September Quinnipiac University’s Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine will welcome its first class of primary care physicians-to-be. Four years in germination, the opening of Connecticut’s fifth medical school would not be possible without the almost single-handed work of the school’s remarkable founding dean, Bruce M. Koeppen, MD. A gifted physician, educator, researcher, author and administrator, Koeppen came to Quinnipiac in autumn 2010 to begin creating a school of medicine out of whole cloth. Now we are at the brink of seeing what will have been three years of labor bear fruit.

As we say hello to QU’s new school of medicine, we also say goodbye to a remarkable doctor who passed away recently, and whose like we may not see again. To characterize Leonard Fasano, MD — father of State Sen. Leonard Fasano, who passed away 18 months ago at the age of 84 — as “old school” is no backhanded compliment. A gifted and caring physician whose relationships with his patients in many cases last a lifetime, Fasano had a profound impact of the many lives he touched, and saved.

He will be missed.

We hoping you enjoy reading all their stories in the pages that follow.

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— Michael C. Bingham Editor

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L e a d e r s a n d

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CORPORATE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Griffin Hospital Patrick A. Charmel, CEO

Local Roots, National Profile In pioneering a new model of patient care, Griffin Hospital is a trailblazer

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riffin Hospital, a not-for-profit, tax-exempt subsidiary of the Griffin Health Services Corp., is a 160-bed acute care community hospital serving more than 100,000 residents of the lower Naugatuck Valley. It also serves as the flagship hospital for Planetree Inc., an international leader in patient-centered care that has received national recognition for creating a facility and approach to patient care that is responsive to the needs of patients. Griffin has more than 280 active and courtesy physicians who have admitting privileges. It is affiliated with the Yale School of Medicine and accredited by the Joint Commission.

centered culture.” She notes that the process begins with input from the hospital staff, patients and families of patients to get a sense of the existing culture.

Frampton says the best way to understand the benefits of Planetree is to visit one of its member hospitals. There,

the visitor will find a culture that begins with music in the parking lot, greeters at the door and staff eager to please and make a patient’s stay comforting as well as keeping the patient informed about every aspect of his or her treatment.

Griffin is recognized for having industry-leading patient satisfaction ratings and has received numerous quality and clinical excellence awards. It is the only hospital to be named on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for ten years running, and was the only Connecticut hospital named a “Top Quality Performer” on key quality measures by the Joint Commission in 2011.

Planetree is a consumer health-care organization dedicated to humanizing health care. The planetree, or sycamore tree, is the tree under which Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, sat when he began teaching his medical students in ancient Greece. In 1992, the hospital instituted Planetree, an innovative model of health care that puts patients’ needs first.

In Planetree’s patient-centered approach to health care, providers partner with patients and their family members to identify and satisfy the full range of patient needs and preferences. The program counts several hundred hospitals and health-care organizations in the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe among its members.

“I’ve seen a lot of changes since the Planetree program began,” says William Richter of Oxford, a former member of the hospital’s Community Advisory Council and a volunteer there for the past 14 years. “With the council, we got together once a month to talk about what we observed, what patients may have told us or what we heard around the hospital. We look at the feedback to see if something works or doesn’t work. We’ve gotten good feedback on the program.”

Richter says the council sees patient comments received by various means, including his own observations in his role as an ambassador for the volunteer program, in which he greets people at the door and guides them to their destination in the hospital. He says the hospital is well-received in the community. He says Griffin keeps up with the bigger hospitals but they are more like “home” and very patient focused.

“Customer service here is great,” he adds. “If we find something on a survey that doesn’t look great, we bring it up at our council meeting and at the next meeting, they’ll have it all squared away.”

Susan Frampton, president of Planetree, which is headquartered at Griffin, says the program is one of the reasons Griffin remains one of the best places to work and that it has had many positive effects on the way the hospital treats its patients and conducts business.

“Probably, the most important influence of Planetree has been on the organizational culture,” says Frampton, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Rutgers and her Ph.D. from UConn, both in medical anthropology.

‘This is the kind of place where you have committed people who embrace change and are willing to try new things,’ says Griffin President and CEO Charmel. ‘You can actually turn the dials here and watch things happen.’

We’re involved in working with hospitals and long-term care settings to help to transform their cultures from a provider-centered culture to a patient- and family6

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“We look for every opportunity to make it a better experience for the patients and their families,” adds Frampton. “It fosters transparency for the patients and allows patients to view their own medical histories and patient records” to answer questions about their condition.

Charmel is also president of the board of governors of the Quinnipiac University Alumni Association and a university trustee. In 2011, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Yale School of Public Health. He is a recipient of the 2009 Planetree Lifetime Achievement Award.

“It’s very much a model that engages patients and their families in their own care process,” notes Frampton.

Patrick A. Charmel, president and CEO of Griffin Health Services Corp. and the hospital, began his association as an intern in 1979 while attending Quinnipiac University.

He served in a variety of administrative positions and rose to become president in 1998. He also serves as president of Planetree Inc., a not-for-profit subsidiary of the corporation that supports an alliance of more than 170 hospitals in the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and Brazil, and over 180 long-term care facilities and ambulatory care centers that are committed to patient empowerment and the delivery of patient-centered care.

Charmel is co-author of Putting Patients First: Designing and Practicing Patient-Centered Care (Jossey-Bass, 2003), which received the American College of Healthcare Executives health care book of the year award in 2004.

A second edition of the book was published in October 2008.

During his tenure, Charmel has earned the hospital a reputation as an award-winning innovative organization, recognized as an industry leader in providing personalized consumer-driven health care in a healing environment.

Under his leadership, Griffin was selected as the 2008 Top Leadership Team in Healthcare in the nation for community and mid-size hospitals by Health Leaders Media.

Griffin has earned numerous quality, value and patient experience awards from various national organizations that measure and monitor hospital performance. It is the only Connecticut hospital named a 2011 Top Quality Performer by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), which accredits health care organizations in America. The hospital was also recognized by Premier Healthcare Alliance as a winner of the 2010 Premier Award for Quality, placing it in the top one percent of the nation’s hospitals.

“I’ve known Patrick since he was my student intern when he was a junior in the health-care program at Quinnipiac,” says William C. Powanda, the hospital’s vice president.

“He’s a humble, self-effacing natural leader who leads by example and his personal values dictate how he manages.

He’s passionate about excellence and providing a patientcentered, exceptional experience for every patient Griffin serves.”

Powanda notes that Griffin’s employees, physicians and his colleagues respect him because he is truthful and straightforward.

“Even if you don’t agree with him, you appreciate his candor and the rationale for his position,” adds Powanda.

“He would never ask anything of an employee that he wouldn’t do himself. I’m proud to call him a colleague and friend.”

Charmel, who’ll celebrate his 15th year as president in February, says he never imagined he’d one day become the CEO of the very hospital where he had worked as a college intern. He figured he’d work there for several years, then move on to a different organization and work his way up the corporate ladder.

“That’s the typical career progression,” says Charmel, who next month also will mark 33 years at Griffin. “You start in a small- or medium-sized hospital in a junior position

and you move up and take on more responsibility because there’s more prestige associated with that. In this organization, I’ve had opportunities to take on additional responsibilities, be progressive, be creative, try new things and, once they’re implemented, actually see some results.”

By contrast, Charmel adds, “In a larger organization, you can exert a lot of effort and not see a lot of positive movement. And that’s a little frustrating, if you’re resultsoriented as I am. This is the kind of place where you have committed people who embrace change and are willing to try new things. You can actually turn the dials here and watch things happen. In a large place, you can turn the dials and see no response. From my point of view, this is the ideal place.

“For folks that are really dedicated to caregiving, this is the place that allows them to practice it,” says Charmel.

“The model here gets stronger over time as because people are drawn here to work because they are committed to that type of approach.”

Charmel says that Griffin’s employees are prepared to make personal sacrifices to insure that patients get the best possible care in an environment that’s conducive to healing.

“It’s not only in direct caregiving, but also it’s an effort to create an environment for caregiving and that takes a lot of effort,” Charmel explains. “It’s resulted in our folks getting a real sense of satisfaction because they know that they’re meeting or exceeding the expectations of their patients. Our folks have a great deal of pride in what they give to their patients, and that’s what makes us a great place to work.”

“We’ve got a national reputation and we’re a model for the industry but we’re intimate and a group of committed caregivers that really see themselves as a family,” adds Charmel. “So it’s the best of both worlds.”

— Thomas R. Violante

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RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR Dr. Mary Tinetti Gladys Phillips Crofoot Professor of Medicine (Geriatrics) and Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases) and of Investigative Medicine; Section Chief, Geriatrics.

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t’s a fact of life: As people get older, gravity starts to become dangerous. Falling is associated with many health threats — broken bones, damaged joints, sometimes even death for the elderly. Falling may be common, but according to one Yale Researcher, common doesn’t mean acceptable.

Mary Tinetti is Yale’s Gladys Phillips Crofoot Professor of Medicine in Geriatrics, Professor of Epidemiology in Chronic Diseases and Investigative Medicine. She’s also section chief in geriatrics.

Fall Gal Yale’s Mary Tinetti has devised an innovative, holistic approach to fighting senior falls

In her 26 years as a physician, there was a sense from the elderly population and other physicians that little or nothing could be done to prevent falls.

“It was inevitable,” Tinetti says. “It was just something that happened when people got older.”

Over the past two decades, Tinetti and her coinvestigators at Yale New Haven have identified that although falling is common and is associated with a lot of

bad outcomes, seniors who are most at risk for having a fall are in many cases identifiable.

“By identifying the risk factors or the problems that they have that put them at risk for falling, we actually can institute treatment to decrease that risk of falling,” she says. After that, the next step is to get the information out to doctors and incorporated into the care of at-risk patients.

“We want to decrease that risk, and then get that treatment incorporated into clinical practice,” Tinetti says. The fruits of her labor are being practiced not just in greater New Haven, but across the country now.

PHOTO: LISA WILDER

Mark Garilli, interim CEO at New Haven’s Tower One assisted living community, calls Tinetti’s work invaluable to his elderly population.“Our goal is to keep folks living independently longer,” he says. “They come here, they have the key to their own apartment, they have their own kitchen and our goal is to keep them living healthy, safely and longer independently.” Fall prevention receives significant attention at Tower One/Tower East.

“Environment plays a big role in that, in terms of how their space is arranged. They need to have clear paths from point A to point B,” Garilli says. At a recent presentation at Tower One, Tinetti spoke about a person’s five senses, and how human beings take advantage of those.

“As people age, those senses can dull, so we need to look to our stronger senses with our wayfinding,” Garilli says.

For example, those who can’t see so well can rely on the sense of feel to navigate from one spot to another.

PHOTO: LISA WILDEN

“We look forward to hearing more from Mary, and more about what she can offer our residents above and beyond our own wellness approach,” says Garilli. “Falls are huge here, even though we do everything we can to prevent them.”

“The most important thing is to become more proactive, take away the obstacles that create falls in our own environment, but it’s also important to continue to educate our residents — and Mary plays a big role in that,” Garilli adds.“As our residents’ senses and bodies change, they need to learn to adapt to better prevent the falls,” he says.

That’s not always the easiest thing to do with an aging person. “We think that one of the biggest things about the education is convincing folks to accept that their body is changing and recognize that they are changing,” says Garilli. “They should understand what the serious risks from a fall entail. It could mean going to rehabilitation and not coming back to live independently.”

Most of the fall risk that older people see comes from muscle weakness, bone weakness from osteoporosis, cognitive impairment from dementia, postural blood pressure (a sudden drop in pressure when one stands up), tripping hazards in the environment and medications.

What is unique and different about Tinetti’s approach is that in medicine, researchers often identify one disease and then a treatment. She looked at it differently, looking at all of the different problems and different interventions.

Tinetti hopes her research will help prevent unwanted side effects from treatment in those with multiple diseases. ‘[I]f you really want to provide the most effective and appropriate health care, we have to start looking at the benefits and harms of treatments in patients with multiple chronic diseases.’

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“Some of it older people can do themselves,” she explains.

“They can keep their environment safer. And for some, it is working with a physical therapist to improve their balance and gait and strength. For others, it’s using the correct walking device.”She says that medications used to treat other illnesses are often to blame for unsteady footing and falling.

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“Medications can have good effects and bad effects,” Tinetti allows. “Physicians prescribe individual drugs for the good effects, but what happens is we wind up with many bad effects, and only some good effects.”She works with physicians to prescribe medications not just on one disease, but what’s best for the overall wellness of the patient.

Tinetti’s team also works with nurses in home care to work with older adults to make their homes safer, to check their blood pressure not just sitting, but also lying and standing.

Tinetti’s research was undertaken through a clinical trial that was so successful it led to funding from the Donahue Foundation, a Connecticut foundation that helped her implement her findings working with physicians, home-care agencies and physical therapists in the Hartford area.

Fellow researcher Dorothy Baker also received funding from the state legislature to disseminate the information throughout Connecticut. In 2009, Tinetti was named a MacArthur Fellow received a “genius” grant from the foundation for her research at Yale.

Tinetti’s work also involves research about multiple chronic conditions, since in medical research, doctors typically look at an individual disease and diagnoses.

“Since older adults typically don’t have one disease, we’re just beginning to understand that if you really want to provide the most effective and appropriate health care for older adults with multiple diseases, we have to start looking at the benefits and harms of treatments in patients with multiple chronic diseases,” she says.

Tinetti’s team has identified the frequency of multiple chronic conditions, identified common combinations of diseases, and identified situations where, treatment for, for example, heart failure might make their lung disease worse, or treatment for dementia might exacerbate the patient’s urinary incontinence.

“We’re looking at those combinations of diseases, with the idea that eventually we’ll help doctors and patients make the most effective decisions for people with multiple diseases,” she says.

Tinetti has a profound curiosity when it comes to the aged. She says it comes from her early days as a physician a quartercentury ago. Training to become an internist, most of her patients were older and she became aware that what she had learned in medical school and residency training didn’t always seem to apply well to an older patient population.

“If we gave them the state-of-the-art treatment, we often made them worse,” she says. “We were often focused on their disease when the patients were focused on their functions.”

New Assisted Living Apartments, Spring 2013

Following her training, Tinetti joined the faculty at Yale and began to research and find the answers to the questions that were most important to older patients.“I used my observations in caring for patients to perform the research that I do,” she says.She hopes that research is preventing falls and enriching the lives of the elderly here and around the world.

— Melissa Nicefaro

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VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR Dr. Seth Feuerstein Venture capitalist, Biotech entrpreneur, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, Founder Little Wonder Inc.

Let Us Entertain You Physician/entrepreneur Feuerstein thinks big. But his latest project is a minor miracle

PHOTO: LISA WILDER

I

f you knew Seth Feuerstein, you might have guessed BNH would select him as a Health Care Hero for his work in the local health care and biotechnology industries. He spends a lot of his time these days working with Cobalt Therapeutics with clinician researchers from several universities including Yale to improve access to mental health care in primary-care groups, the military and Veterans Administration, through insurers, health systems and accountable care organizations, and he has played roles ranging from co-founder to investor to board member at companies such as Affomix, Biorelix, Carigent Therapeutics, Cobalt Therapeutics, Elm Street Ventures, Hadapt, HistoRx and North East Life Sciences.

You might also guess we’d recognize him for his work as a member of the clinical faculty at Yale where he supervises and interviews residents and is much sought for his opinions and advice on complex legal matters where psychiatric illness may play a role.

It turns out we chose him for something else entirely: a non-profit he founded called Little Wonder that he hopes will improve the experience of those undergoing cancer treatment.

“Little Wonder grew out of some of my life experiences and a moment when I realized what I knew from each of those experiences might improve people’s experiences and those of their loved ones,” Feuerstein explains. “We have had great support from various local groups including Smilow Cancer Center and the clinicians there and athletic programs such as New Haven Open [as well as] Quinnipiac and Yale athletics.”

Through Little Wonder, those undergoing treatment for cancer at Yale-New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Hospital can receive tickets to attend local shows, performances, concerts and sporting events.

Smilow social worker Denise Armstrong calls the Little Wonder program a “godsend” for cancer patients who come to radiation therapy every single weekday for weeks on end.

Feuerstein hopes Little Wonder can provide a pleasant distraction from the day-to-day burden of cancer treatment for patients. ‘It’s a way for us to give them a night out. That can’t be underestimated sometimes. I believe and hope it helps people do better to be able to smile and enjoy some of their time during the process.’

“Complimentary tickets to cultural and sporting events is a pleasant distraction from their illness that they can share with family and friends,” Armstrong says. She adds that the program will be expanded to other areas of Smilow in the near future, so not only patients receiving radiation can take advantage.

Long Wharf Theatre was among the first to sign on with the new program.

PHOTO: LISA WILDEN

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Long Wharf spokesman Steve Scarpa says that when Feuerstein approached the theater with the idea, it seemed very much like something the regional theater would want to participate in. “One of the things that theater provides among many things is respite to take your cares away, or in this case, to empathize and see the world through a different prism,” says Scarpa. “If we can provide for a moment for these people something positive or good or thoughtful in some way, we’re delighted to be able to do it.”

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“The team at Long Wharf Theater has been incredibly supportive as we built the website and got things rolling,” says Feuerstein. His wife Sharon also volunteers with the organization, making sure tickets and patients are getting linked, and their children recently committed donations to Little Wonder (and other charities) in lieu of receiving some Hanukkah gifts.

“Cancer treatment is an often rigorous, disruptive and all-consuming period,” Feuerstein. “Patients often go on a nearly daily basis for weeks and weeks. They are often so focused on their treatment that everything else — including planning enjoyable, distracting experiences with loved ones — gets drowned out.

“Many of these patients will survive; some will not,” he adds. “My hope is that in all cases they will share powerful experiences and create lasting memories with those they care about. I also do it because I believe and hope it helps people do better to be able to smile and enjoy some of their time during the process.”

Feuerstein had the idea to start Little Wonder several years ago when two of his jobs collided.

“When I was in medical school I had two part-time jobs,” he recounts. “One was working in the student activities office at NYU. We had tickets to everything ranging from Broadway shows to the Metropolitan Opera to Knicks games.”

It was there that he learned that cultural institutions and season ticket holders are often unable to use their tickets.

In the case of NYU they would be donated and students would be able to attend events otherwise beyond their means. Other experiences exposed him to the rigors that patients and their loved ones face while enduring cancer treatment: dealing with insurers, scheduling appointments, balancing family and friends, figuring out who to tell, what to tell them.

“The list goes on and on,” he says. “Carving time out and purchasing tickets when each day is an unknown is generally not occurring.

“I believe people are generally interested in helping others but often need a little help or facilitation to make it easier for them,” Feuerstein adds. So he designed the site to allow venues such as Long Wharf to make patients aware of tickets they are generously offering and facilitate access on short notice for them and loved ones.

“In a perfect world, a patient might be completing a treatment and log in at the hospital and see four tickets for that evening’s performance at, let’s say, Long Wharf,” Feuerstein explains. “They can call their spouse, get the kids and in a couple of hours be enjoying an evening at a world-class venue and performance.”

already signed on with Little Wonder, but Feuerstein is on the hunt for more.

Three families receiving care at Smilow were able to see Shrek: The Musical at the Shubert over the holiday break, and since the Yale and Quinnipiac hockey teams were both ranked in the top ten in the nation early this season, his efforts are allowing patients to see many future NHL hockey players in the coming months.

“If people out there know of venues who might be willing to participate or season ticket holders who sometimes have extra seats, please send them our way so we can facilitate access,” Feuerstein says. He also hopes to sign up other cancer centers in Connecticut.

“The value of this is a way for people in the entertainment industry to give back in a very small way,” says LWT’s Scarpa. “It’s a way to fulfill a primary function of arts and sports. It’s a way for us to bring people in and give them a night out. That can’t be underestimated sometimes. We know it’s not everything, but it’s a way to give people a break, a way to just take their mind off of things.”

Little Wonder lets people live like people for a bit, and not like patients.

Long Wharf Theatre, the Shubert Theater, Yale athletics, Quinnipiac athletics are among the venues that have

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www.gaylord.org JANUARY 2013 • HEALTHCARE HEROES

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HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL/ ADMINISTRATOR Glenn Elia CEO, Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists

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n his first day as administrator for the New Haven Orthopedic Group, Glenn Elia remembers its founder, John Aversa, telling him, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

The phrase became “sort of my mantra,” says Elia, CEO of the practice, now known as Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists. He has made his mark by establishing new

A True Game-Changer How Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists’ Glenn Elia has recast his practice’s care-delivery model

models for delivery of orthopaedic health care in venues such as company-run outpatient surgery centers and urgent care walk-in centers.

Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists operates eight offices in greater New Haven, with MRIs at two locations and physical therapy centers at seven. It also cares for athletic teams from Yale University, Quinnipiac University

PHOTO: LISA WILDER

and 16 high schools. The practice has 16 boardcertified orthopaedic physicians, three podiatrists and a rehabilitation physician.

“My job here, besides running the business, is to sort of be a bit of a visionary about what are the needs of the community and how do we meet these needs,” Elia says.

He began as a physical therapist, with BS degrees in biology and anatomy from Springfield (Mass.) College (1978) and a certificate in physical therapy from the University of Pennsylvania (1979).

In 1985, he transitioned to the administrative side of the business, as director of operations and director of physical therapy at a couple of walk-in centers.

While earning an MBA at Sacred Heart University (1992), he began physician practice management at Neurosurgery Associates in Waterbury.

Aversa, an orthopaedic surgeon who started the New Haven Orthopedic Group in 1963, hired Elia in 1993.

“We were growing and doing well but we needed someone to help give us more direction,” he says.

“At the time we recognized that orthopaedics was becoming increasingly subspecialized,” Elia says. “People wanted not just a general orthopaedist. We changed the [business] name to Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists to reflect what we believed to be a better representation of our work.

PHOTO: LISA WILDEN

“We also saw the need to provide ancillary services such as developing a big rehab program.”Seeking other opportunities, Elia traveled to Texas to research how several orthopaedic groups were managing their own outpatient surgery centers.

“That was really an important turning point,” he says.

“We began to investigate the [Connecticut Department of Public Health’s] Certificate of Need process. It probably took a good year. We ultimately were successful. We got the first Certificate of Need for an outpatient orthopaedic surgical center [in the state]. We broke new ground, and opened up a one-room, single-specialty orthopaedic surgical center in Hamden in 2000.”

The strategy worked.“We now started to compete with hospitals to deliver high-quality services,” Elia says.

“More and more patients heard about it, and loved it.”

The practice added doctors and in 2011 opened a new, bigger outpatient surgery center in Branford, with three operating rooms and a pain-management suite.

“This is one example of leading the way,” Elia says.

“Other [orthopaedic] practices have benefited, and now also have surgical centers.

Glenn Elia has been ‘visionary’ in expanding the reach of orthopaedic care for patients through CT Orthopaedic Associates. ‘We’ve perceived need in the community and aggressively gone after ways to meet those needs.’

“The other thing that caused our practice to grow was my knowledge of knowing how to deal with Hartford,” Elia adds. “We were able to acquire two MRIs. “The walk-in center business is the latest wrinkle. We were finding a lot of patients were getting hurt and had to go to the [hospital] ER, which was not well equipped” to handle orthopaedic patients.

About 18 months ago COS launched OrthoNow, an emergency walk-in care service currently open seven days at week, for limited hours, at its Branford and Hamden offices.

Continued on page 14

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“We have got digital X-ray,” Elia says. “[Patients] pay for an office visit. It takes 20 minutes. Then they have a follow-up appointment.”Elia also has pioneered new paradigms with health insurance companies.

“Probably the hardest thing to sell the first time was the surgical center, because it was so new,” he says. “We worked with the carriers to develop contracting and pricing. They began to realize this was a savings to them, rather than going through a hospital. As I developed a reputation, they began to trust that what I said was true.

When we say we’re going to do something, we’ve been able to deliver the goods.”

David R. Fusco, president of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Connecticut, was an early convert.“I think Glenn shows great vision and great leadership in sort of stepping outside how we currently deliver care, and really pushing that agenda,” Fusco says, “to do it more effectively and to meet evolving needs of our community.”

Elia offers reciprocal praise of Fusco. “Dave has always been a like-minded visionary carrier,” he says. “Right now I’m working with Anthem to develop new payment methodology.”

COS has what Elia describes as “an unusual relationship” with Yale in caring for its athletic teams: a “capitated contract” health-care plan under which the university pays a per-member/per-month fee for patient care and surgical care.

“There’s no one else around doing it,” he says. “It started in California in the 1990s, then died. But this agreement with Yale has been a very successful working relationship.

We provide coverage at their health center and do surgery at their surgical center. If they use our surgical center they pay a fee.

“We’re proud of the fact that we’ve kept the cost of orthopaedic care for Yale flat for ten years.” In addition to caring for high school and college athletes, COS provides educational clinics for coaches on injury prevention and rehabilitation.

Aversa believes Elia is well equipped to meet the challenges. “He has lived up to all our expectations,” Aversa says. “Every year we have added some new facet to our practice. With Glenn’s help, we are one of the most, if not the most, successful practices in the state in orthopaedics.

A corporate sponsor of the Southern Connecticut Conference (SCC), which represents 22 high schools and 27 sports in greater New Haven, the practice in 2010 established “Comeback Player of the Year Scholarships” awarded annually to a severely injured male and female high school athletes overcoming great odds to become a role model. Each winner receives a $1,000 scholarship.

“That was Glenn’s idea, to recognize kids for the hard work they do,” says SCC Commissioner Al Carbone, “He’s a wonderful man, a father who cares about his kids, who played high school sports.

“He’s a very enthusiastic gentleman with a great mind for business. He is on the top level and ahead of the curve. But to me what is most impressive is he is not just somebody who’s doing business. He wanted to get involved in the community.”

Elia attributes much of COS’ success to the support of the practice’s doctors. “It took some vision and some insights, but I couldn’t have done this if I didn’t have physicians who were willing to take risk and invest in the practice,” he says. “A lot of physicians want to see patients and go home, like Groundhog Day [the 1993 film starring a weatherman repeatedly living the same day]. But this group has been willing to embrace change. It’s risk and return, which is why every group in Connecticut doesn’t have what we have.

“That’s what’s made us different. We’ve perceived need in the community and aggressively gone after ways to meet those needs. Now what we perceive is a need to deliver the services in a more efficient manner.”

Elia sees the need growing with the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. “There are a lot of changes coming with Obamacare,” he says. “We know that the way we get reimbursed will most likely change. Expect cost compressions. There are going to be more people in the system. Expect the remuneration is not going to go up.”

“You trudge and trudge and trudge, and when you think you’re on top, that’s a dangerous time,” Aversa adds. “We don’t want to be complacent. We always want to do the right things to enhance our practice.”

COS began offering cervical and lumbar surgeries at its surgical center last year, after merging with a neurological group. More partnerships are likely with other specialties and partners.

“We’re looking forward to working with Yale to bring orthopaedic care to another level,” Elia says. “I think Yale has aspirations of building an orthopaedic facility, and we certainly look to collaborate with them. We’re having those conversations right now.”

In addition, Elia is “actively communicating with providers all within the bandwidth of musculoskeletal.

“We have 350 employees, full and part-time,” he says.

“We expect that number to grow.”

Aversa sees opportunities in home care.

“I would like to have a facility that we control that constitutes the continuum of care — nursing, rehab, diet, cleanliness — seamlessly,” he says. “I want you to come in the front door [and] be treated, be managed, be followed. “We should change our name to Orthopaedic Complete Care. There’s a trend to operate on people and send them to a rehab facility. But they do significantly better treated at home with support. That’s a better way of doing it, and it’s cheaper.”

Chances are, Elia will figure out a way to get that ball rolling.

— Karen Singer

Parrett, Porto, Parese & Colwell, P.C.

Join Us In Congratulating

ATTORNEYS AND COUNSELLORS AT LAW

Glen Elia, CEO

Carl M. Porto John A. Parese William S. Colwell Michael Dean Amato Louis M. Federici

Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists for his selection as a

Anthony M. Solomine Carl M. Porto II Joseph M. Porto Sandra L. Smith Jennifer Rignoli

Alison L. Slater Richard J. Parrett* John W. Colleran* Joseph A. Aceto* *of counsel

Congratulations

Greater New Haven Healthcare Hero for 2012

To

Glenn F. Elia HealthCare Administrator of the Year       

PHYSICIANS & MEDICAL PRACTICES PERSONAL INJURY AUTO ACCIDENTS WORKERS’ COMPENSATION EMPLOYMENT LAW WILLS ESTATE PLANNING

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The Experience Matters.

John M. Aversa, M.D. John M. Beiner, M.D Hubert B. Bradburn, M.D. David S. Caminear, D.P.M. David B. Cohen, M.D. Jeffrey M. DeLott, D.P.M Peter A. DeLuca, M.D. Richard Diana, M.D. Eliza Fantarella, DPM Norman R. Kaplan, M.D. John D. Kelley, M.D. Jeffrey Klauser, MD Kenneth M. Kramer, M.D. John Marino, M.D.

We congratulate our CEO, Glenn Elia, as Health Care Heroes Healthcare Professional/Administrator of the Year.

John D. McCallum, M.D. Philip A. Minotti, M.D. Thomas P. Moran, M.D. Rakesh Patel, MD Patrick A. Ruwe, M.D. Mark W. Scanlan, M.D. Enzo J. Sella, M.D.

C T- O RTH O.CO M

Sanda L. Tomak, M.D.

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EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR Dr. Bruce Koeppen Founding Dean, Frank H. Netter Medical School at Quinnipiac University

B

ruce Koeppen discovered his love of teaching at the University of Chicago in the mid-1970s.“There was a course offered in the second year of the curriculum, and faculty would choose fourth-year medical students to help teach it,” recalls Koeppen, who was among the chosen.

As a result, he says, “I made the decision to go into academic medicine.”Several decades later, in 2010, Koeppen was selected as founding dean of a medical

There at the Creation On a new North Haven campus, Quinnipiac’s Bruce Koeppen is building a med school out of whole cloth

school at Quinnipiac University. Its principal mission is to train primary-care physicians.

“The other piece is to work collaboratively with the schools of nursing and health sciences, and teach them in an interprofessional curriculum,” says Koeppen, 61, whose experience makes him especially suitable to spearhead the effort.

The first in his family to attend college, Koeppen grew up in Elgin, Ill., about 40 miles northwest of Chicago. “I

was always interested in science,” he says. “What I really liked was understanding the function of the human body.”

Koeppen majored in physiology at the University of Illinois/Urbana, where he earned a BS in 1973 and began a lifelong interest in the workings of the kidney. After graduating, he says, “Instead of getting an internship, I got advanced research training.”

Koeppen got his MD (1977) at the University of Chicago and Ph.D. (1980) at the University of Illinois, then Continued on page 18

Koeppen’s experience in education and evaluation of medical schools’ strengths and weaknesses made him an ideal choice to start Quinnipiac’s medical school from scratch with a non-traditional model.

‘We are not going to be a research-intensive medical school or have a faculty practice,’ he says. ‘We hope our graduates go out and practice in the trenches.’

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St. Vincent’s Congratulates St. Vincent’s Health Services congratulates Healthcare Hero winner Dr. Bruce Koeppen on his visionary leadership of Quinnipiac’s Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine.

We also congratulate and thank our staff members for their commitment to improving healthcare for area residents and making possible this Community Service Award for St. Vincent’s.

www.stvincents.org 1-877-255-SVHS (7847)

375 New Haven

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spent two years at on a research fellowship with renal physiology expert Gerhard Giebisch.

Koeppen has since co-authored several textbooks and dozens of articles about physiology and the kidney.

His first faculty appointment came in 1982, as an assistant professor in the departments of medicine and physiology at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine in Farmington.

Over the next decade Koeppen conducted research at UConn while becoming an associate professor and professor in the departments of medicine and cell biology.

Working with Peter J. Deckers, then dean of the UConn Medical School, Koeppen also revamped the medical school education program.

“We implemented a totally new curriculum that was system-based rather than subject-based, which was pretty controversial among faculty and still is at some schools in America,” says Deckers, whose current title is dean emeritus of the UConn School of Medicine and professor of surgery. “Bruce was completely responsible for implementing that at all levels and exemplary in making it happen.”

The Anniversary Issue

375

In the early 1990s, Koeppen was named associate dean for preclinical education at the UConn Medical School.

Over the next decade and a half he held a variety of administrative titles, culminating in dean for academic affairs.

New Haven at 375

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Our Future

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“I was responsible for administrative oversight for all education programs, from medical students to residents to continuing education, and also had administrative responsibility facilities,” he explains.

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Along the way, he earned a slew of UConn and national awards, including the American Society of Physiology’s Arthur C. Guyton Teaching Award (1995), the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Alpha He was chair of the accreditation team for the Omega Alpha’s Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teaching outdoors preliminary accreditation for the Hofstra University Award (1998) and the University Chicago New of Haven at 375Pritzker North Shore-LIJ Health School of Medicine and the School of Medicine’s Distinguished Service award The Founding weAlth Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida (2002). In 2009, he became an inaugural member of the Our Future 2013 Guide: Atlantic University.

Shoreline- Tow University of Connecticut’s Academy of Distinguished NEW HAVEN 375th AnniversAry of new hAven Co All New New Haven Educators.

WEDDINGS New Haven Graduation • magazine heAlthCAre heroes “Bruce had done many site visits and had been executive Bigger, Brassier secretary• onValentines a lot of those visits,” Deckers says.

In February 2010, Koeppen began to contemplate a Weddings Take to the Web Bolder Love In “Therefore, he knew the strengths and weaknesses of differentInfuture.“I picked up the Hartford Courant and New Haven SummEr medical schools. Some are clinically focused; some are saw a story about Quinnipiac University’s plans to build CAmpS research-focused and spend more time on that than a new medical school,” he recalls. He quickly applied for Directory education. So Bruce was Education extremely Guide well preparedsummer to the job as founding dean of the Frank H. Netter School g INSIDE: 2013 Greater New Haven Healthcare Heroes implement aSchool new curriculum in a new medical school — of Medicine.

High Confidential living in style: home & foodAt- Home: CoverSum probably better than anyone else.”

“I did initial interviews in June,” Koeppen says. “I made high sChool ConfidentiAl Senior Living From 1999 to 2005, Koeppen served as a member of the it to the short list and did second interviews in July and AT Living HomE:Medical Building The Outdoor Lifestyle Education Senior • Spring Fashion Graduate Education Advisory•Council at the Guide August. In mid-September I got the phone call from Mark state of Connecticut’s Office of Health Care Access.

Thompson (now Quinnipiac University’s executive vice Summer Camps • Events Preview president/provost) and officially started on November 1, “To start a new medical school you really need two 2010. At that time I was the only employee of the School things,” adds Decker. “One is to know all the demands of Medicine.” new hAve of the groups that license and accredit you. No one knew BACk it better than Bruce, who had lived through and knew all to sC

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the issues that had to be on the table. You also have to know how to recruit good faculty with a commitment to education.”

Koeppen’s qualifications were perfect for Quinnipiac.“Bruce is just an ideal dean for our school, says university President John L. Lahey.

“In addition to just getting through the process and knowing what to do, he has the temperament and experience to accomplish our medical school’s mission, which is to try to encourage as many of our graduates as possible to practice primary medicine, and to do this working with schools of health science and nursing.

“Bruce is brilliant, yet you’d never know it to interact with him,” adds Lahey. “His personality is very welcoming, and he’s got great interpersonal skills you don’t always find it in geniuses.” The U.S. is in the midst of a new medical school boom.

“The last round of new medical schools was in the 1960s and ’70s, and that round was sparked by impending physician shortages,” Koeppen explains. “The feds helped these schools get of the ground.

“This round also is being fueled by impending physician shortages. But this time they are being funded by states, clinical entities or private universities, and hopefully will provide additional physicians to address the shortage of about 100,000 physicians by 2020 and 150,000 by 2025.”

At least 16 new medical schools have obtained initial accreditation, including three in Florida and three in Michigan, and half a dozen others are in the works.

“Health care increasingly is a team sport, with everyone working together for the care of the patient,” Koeppen says. “Quinnipiac said that’s clearly the future of health care, so why not train our students to be better team players when they get into the workforce?”

Koeppen has been hiring and seeking “master teachers who have a track record as excellent medical school educators, or junior faculty who have the potential.”

“Our model is not traditional,” he says. “We are not going to be a research-intensive medical school or have a faculty practice. We hope our graduates go out and practice in the trenches.”

For a medical school to be accredited, Koeppen explains, “You’ve got to document that you have all resources in place to be successful, including the faculty, staff and clinical placements, so students you admit will get a quality education and that they’ll be able to finish. Our documentation was eight inches [thick] of paper.”

On October 3, 2012, Quinnipiac received approval from the state Board of Education to award medical degrees, shortly after received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. The first class, which will matriculate this fall, will have 60 students, a number projected to grow to 125 by 2017.

St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport will be the school’s primary clinical partner, with other training sites at MidState Medical Center in Meriden and Middlesex Hospital in Middletown.

Slated for completion in March 2013, the 145,000-square-foot Quinnipiac medical school will include offices, 16 exam rooms, a human anatomy facility, a clinical skills assessment facility, two simulation operating rooms, a library, a lounge space with a yoga studio and a fitness center.

“Bruce has developed a curriculum, designed a medical school building and hired faculty and administrators all in about a year’s time,” says Lahey, who adds that to accomplish preliminary accreditation “in less than two years is just phenomenal.”

Koeppen’s extraordinary competence comes as no surprise to Deckers, who was “delighted” when his former colleague landed the founding dean’s job.

“Bruce is very much a professional,” Deckers says. “He takes being in a position very seriously. He manages times impeccably and has a sense of duty that transcends that of other people. He wants to instill in the generation of students that he’s going to be responsible for the same kind of personal and professional pride.

“I know that that school is going to be successful, and I’m absolutely sure they’ll recruit outstanding people to the classroom, because Bruce wouldn’t have it any other way.”

— Karen Singer

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COMMUNITY SERVICE: INDIVIDUAL Jeannette Ickovics Professor of Epidemiology and Psychology; Director, Community Alliance for Research & Engagement (CARE); Deputy Director and Director of Training, Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale School of Public Health

N

ew Haven residents have been studied, and studied and studied again. In the past it’s been somewhat of a sticking point between Yale University — a major researcher — and its host city, with town-gown relations at times strained by the ongoing microscopic inquiries, examinations and analyses of Elm City residents and their communities.

Catalysts for Community Change Public health advocate Jeannette Ickovics works to shower her clientele with CARE

Enter CARE. The acronym stands for Community Alliance for Research & Engagement. And therein, says Director Jeannette Ickovics, lies the difference between CARE studies and traditional research projects involving the New Haven community.

“So this is about a new way of working collaboratively that frankly we didn’t think existed. We feel that we’ve created a kind of unique partnership.”

“One of the reasons it’s different is, we really initiated this with a sense of community-university partnership. The partnership is at the heart [of the research],” says Ickovics.

“We spent the first few years building the engagement,” Ickovics says. For example, CARE staff members spent time with New Haven residents, getting to know their

That “unique partnership” is built on a positive relationship that’s been developed over time.

Ickovics says determining the health needs of people in the community helps providers to offer targeted care programs. ‘We’re in the productivity cycle of using the evidence to make change,’ she says. Pictured (l-r) are CARE staffers Alycia Santilli, Maurice Williams and Ickovics.

PHOTO: LISA WILDER

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thoughts, concerns and ideas regarding health and healthcare issues.

“Literally, we were knocking on doors and sitting on stoops,” Ickovics says.

The result is a program designed to directly benefit the community by providing tangible, comprehensive solutions to health needs.

T date, projects such as tobacco-cessation initiatives, increasing amounts of healthy foods at corner stores, school-based Weight Watchers, a museum food exhibit and community gardens have been established through CARE. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“CARE has really pushed us to be responsible and responsive to community needs,” says Ickovics.

A program of the Yale School of Public Health, CARE was launched in 2007 to assess and improve New Haven residents’ health needs.

“Now we’re in the productivity cycle of using the evidence to make change,” Ickovics says.

Among the results is a public exhibit, titled Big Food: Health, Culture and the Evolution of Eating, that debuted at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Ickovics served as its curator.

“It helped us as a neighborhood to expand our notion of public health. It’s not only the physical, but emotional well-being and public safety,” says CARE advisory board member Ann T. Green. The exhibit sought to improve observers’ food choices and consumption by highlighting the effects of processed and fatty foods, portion sizes and lack of exercise on weight and health. A nationwide tour is planned.

Green began her work with CARE as a community surveyor in 2009 for New Haven’s West River

Joseph Cardinale, MD, Chief of Radiation Oncology at the Center for Cancer Care at Griffin Hospital.

neighborhood. She believes CARE’s success is due to “the willingness to really apply principles of public health in Yale’s own backyard” and its “long-term commitment” and holistic approach.

Neighborhood leaders such as Green play an important role in CARE’s success, Ickovics says.

“It’s not work we do alone,” she says, adding that the input of entrenched community residents is key to “understanding what the community priorities are.”

Ickovics’ ability to understand needs and priorities stems from the personal — her parents survived the Holocaust and instilled in her a sense of social justice, she says — as well as the professional.

A native of Philadelphia, Ickovics earned a BA in psychology from Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College (magna cum laude) in 1984 and a master’s degree in applied social psychology from George Washington University in 1987. Two years later she was awarded a Ph.D. in that field, also from GWU. She came to Yale as a fellow in 1989 and has been there ever since, holding a succession of academic and administrative positions. The 49-year-old lives in Madison.

In addition to Green and other local leaders, there are dozens of community partners, institutional collaborators and neighborhood supporters in the form of various schools, health facilities and social-service organizations that work with CARE. “We have a program called ‘Health Heroes’ in the schools,” notes Ickovics, adding that participants “made a commitment to eating better and being more active.

that they care about the kids so much that we’re able to work together.”

Maurice Williams, CARE’s community outreach coordinator, agrees.

“It’s hard to make behavioral changes, and a lot health [improvements] require behavioral change,” Williams observes. New Haven’s wealth disparity is a contributing factor, studies suggest.

“It’s challenging, in the social and economic times we live in, for people to make health an important part of their lives,” says Williams.

It’s easier to pay $10 for a fast-food meal for a family of four than spend time shopping for, planning and cooking meals that include fresh fruit and vegetables and other healthy items, Williams notes. Plus, he says, society tends to “market bad food more than we market good food.”

The challenge for CARE, he says, is to emphasize “an education process that’s kind of been left out of the mainstream of education.”“We’re really working on a grassroots level,” adds Alycia Santilli, CARE’s director of community initiatives.

Over the next five years or so, Ickovics would like to see results of the work coming out of CARE to impact public policy.

“Policy initiatives, so we can create change that would be more sustainable,” Ickovics says. “I think what we’re doing is making a difference.”

— Felicia Hunter

“We’ve been very fortunate to work with other leaders in the city,” she says. That is buoyed by “really respecting

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PERSON OF MERIT Jon Soderstrom Managing Director, Yale University’s Office of Cooperative Research

From Lab to Marketplace How Yale‘s Jon Soderstrom became a technology-transfer superstar

J

on Soderstrom once thought he would become a minister. Instead, his career path led to Yale University, where he became managing director of the Office of Cooperative Research (OCR), overseeing the commercialization of inventions stemming from faculty research.

“It’s a rather improbable journey,” acknowledges Soderstrom, who is widely recognized as heading one of the most successful university technology-transfer initiatives in the country.

Along the way he has had a hand in the creation of more than two dozen ventures, including Molecular Staging, Genomic Systems, Achillion Pharmaceuticals, Protometrix, Iconic Therapeutics, Applied Spine Technologies, HistoRx, Affomix and Kolltan Pharmaceuticals. And done his best to start and keep those companies in New Haven.

Soderstrom’s journey began far from Yale, in Sparta, Mich., a tiny town 17 miles north of Grand Rapids.

“It’s Lake Wobegon [Garrison Keillor’s fictional Minnesota town] and I’m not kidding,” he says, “with three Lutheran churches — one for the Swedes, one for the Germans and one for everybody else.” Soderstrom’s

grandfather arrived there in 1882, fleeing the potato famine in his native Sweden.

of my life, but had a different plan for me and how I was going to serve.”

Soderstrom adored his father Edward, a bomber pilot during World War II, who received the Distinguished Flying Cross and saved fellow pilot George McGovern [later a U.S. senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee], when both were shot down on a mission.

Soderstrom went to graduate school at Northwestern, where he studied operations research and focused on the management of innovation and productivity. He earned a Ph.D. in 1980, the same year the Bayh-Dole Act was enacted, allowing universities and small businesses to own inventions created using federal funding and to commercialize those inventions.

After the war his father, an engineer, helped run the family hardware business until the late 1960s, then designed warehouse systems for a firm with clients including Federal Express and Wal-Mart.

“He was my hero because he could design anything and make it work, and traveled all over the world solving problems,” Soderstrom says. “That’s what I’ve tried to emulate.”

While growing up, Soderstrom baled hay, trimmed trees and picked apples and peaches at local farms. He graduated from Hope College, a Christian liberal arts school in Holland, Mich., in 1976 with an undergraduate degree in psychology.

“Originally I thought I would be a minister.” Soderstrom says. “God was calling me. He’s still there, at the center

“That’s what opened the floodgates,” says Soderstrom, who had spent a semester at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and was hired there following graduation.

“I started with social impact analysis — how you define the impact of technology on society,” he explains. “It was exactly the same stuff I’d been doing at Northwestern but funded by the Department of Energy. One of the programs, an energy-related inventions program, gave small grants to inventors for proof of principle and proof of prototype, to try to commercial them and see what worked and what didn’t.”

He later became director of technology licensing and director of program development at Oak Ridge, which was operated by Union Carbide until 1984, when Martin Marietta Energy Systems took over.

PHOTO: TOM VIOLATE

In the mid-1990s, Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed Corp. “I was starting to feel restless and antsy,” Soderstrom says. “Then the phone rang and there was a recruiter asking about the tech-transfer program at Yale.”His first reaction was lukewarm. But he changed his mind after meeting Gregory Gardiner, who then headed OCR, which had opened in 1982 with one person and few resources.

The situation radically changed, Soderstrom says, when Richard C. Levin became Yale president in 1993. “What they wanted to do was transformative,” he says. “They really wanted to leverage the intellectual capital, to transform it and to change the world.

“Rick also wanted to use the office to build the economy of New Haven,” Soderstrom adds. “Who wouldn’t want to do that?”He joined the office in 1996.

“Greg and I set ourselves a goal of six ideas that could be funded,” Soderstrom recalls. “Of those, three got financed. One became Molecular Staging, another Qiagen, and the third polyGenomics. Each one raised around $5 million in Series A funding, and it got to a point where we had the money. ‘What are we going to do with these things?’ One of the conditions was we had to do them in New Haven.”

‘We’re trying to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem,’ says OCR’s Soderstrom. ‘The stronger New Haven is, the easier it is for us to retain the brightest and best faculty and students.’

Finding suitable real estate, however, was not Soderstrom’s forte. It was familiar territory for Bruce Alexander, then a Yale alumnus working with Levin on economic-development issues. Soon he and Soderstrom were collaborating.

“When I first came to New Haven, a company, Gene Logic, was going to Gaitherburg, Md. and taking jobs,” says Alexander, now Yale’s vice president for New Haven and state affairs and campus development. “Jon and I figured out there was no wet lab space available in New Haven. The two of us worked together to get Winstanley [Enterprises] involved. They were in Connecticut and when they expressed some interest in 300 George Street [the former SNET headquarters]. The university agreed to take about 50,000 square feet [ten percent of the building’s total] in order to provide them with some cash flow if they purchased it. They also had a relationship with one of our endowment managers. That gave the developer some comfort.”

In 2000 Winstanley acquired 300 George from Matthews Ventures for $27.5 million and retrofitted it for bioscience use.“Molecular Staging became the first biotech tenant, closely followed by a bunch of others,” Soderstrom says.

Winstanley went on to manage a lab and office building at 25 Science Park and renovate part of the former Winchester firearms building for Higher One, a financial services company for colleges and universities founded

by Yale students. The developer currently is working on plans for 100 College Street, a new 400,000-square-foot mixed-use building to which Alexion Pharmaceuticals will relocate. The building is a centerpiece of the Downtown Crossing project, which aims to convert part of Route 34 into an urban boulevard.

“One of the interesting things is that what Jon and his predecessor Greg Gardiner did, collectively, was to create a real spirit of entrepreneurship among Yale faculty,” Sherman adds. “When I started in this game, the pharmaceutical industry was a dirty word to a lot of academic investigators, and it was very difficult to get academics engaged. What Jon and Greg did, among others at Harvard and MIT, was helped the faculties to appreciate, not necessarily the financial aspects of developing their discoveries, but how important they could be at helping their discoveries be translated to real-life applications to help real people. That’s one of the reasons why Yale was always a good place to go to find technology. The academic personalities were really enthusiastic.”

“I think with Downtown Crossing and Alexion coming back into town [the company started at 25 Science Park before moving to Cheshire], it’s going to spark a whole lot of stuff,” Soderstrom says. “We’ve got a bunch of companies that are positioned to transform New Haven into a biotech hub. Venture capital funding is just really hard right now, but we’re exploring new financial approaches that are project-based, instead of doing companies.

Sherman describes his relationship with Soderstrom as “more of a partnership” than mere licensee/licensor.

“We’re never going to be that big,” he allows. “We never aspired to be the new Cambridge.”Alexander calls Soderstrom “a great colleague with respect to efforts to partner with and strengthen New Haven.

“In the university community he is regarded as absolutely tops in his field,” Alexander says. “He’s also very civic-minded. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush honored Soderstrom as the 87th “Point of Light” for his volunteer work building and rehabilitating low-income housing in Tennessee. He had been organizing churches in Appalachia to address problems of the poor. Aid to Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties [ADFAC] grew out of the effort, and Soderstrom was board president in its early years.

“I think the most important thing about Jon is what you see is what you get,” says Mike Sherman, a serial entrepreneur and partner at Elm Street Ventures who

started five companies based on Yale research and who has known Soderstrom for more than two decades. “He’s a very down-to-earth individual, trustworthy, has a lot of integrity and he is experienced enough and good enough at his job that he knows how to make things happen.

“And that’s one of the things that makes Yale’s technologytransfer [office] stand out,” Sherman says. “They really do look it at as a cooperative venture to try to make the technologies successful. When you set up a company, you need to work out a business plan to translate something that’s done at the bench level in a commercial mode.

You need to have to the scientists, and Jon is good at facilitating that.

“And then, of course, there’s the onerous task of raising money,” continues Sherman. “Jon was always helpful putting me in touch with investors. I would run companies for a time, then move on and find another opportunity. He often sat on the board of these companies, was helpful in finding permanent members and in a number of ways of providing extra benefits, other than just someone to look to as a source of acquiring rights to intellectual property.”

Soderstrom “is widely recognized by his peers to be a thought leader in the technology space,” says Todd Sherer, director of technology transfer at Emory University and president of the Association of University Technology Managers.

“He’s broadly regarded as an expert in the business and has always been viewed as being more progressive in the ways to think about tech transfer and the laws and issues that direct it.”

Sherer also says Soderstrom is “one of the few experts in the country, and probably the world, people will turn to [for advice].”Soderstrom also is a leader in fostering new sources of innovation.

In 2007, he became instrumental in founding the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute [YEI] after noticing Yale students were moving elsewhere to start new companies.

“We’re trying to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem around New Haven,” Soderstrom says. “That’s what Greg Gardiner and I talked about in 1996.”

Recently some eight percent of new Yale ventures were in the life sciences. “Nowadays, because of the students, we’re starting to see things growing up in other areas, particularly clean technology and computer sciences,” Soderstrom says. “I suspect that the students will always be a more diverse portfolio of opportunities than research.” Soderstrom credits Yale President Levin with setting the stage for the university’s entrepreneurial growth.

“It all started at the very top with Rick. He has never wavered in his support, and has been one of the biggest cheerleaders.”Soderstrom expects the support to continue and “grow even further” under Yale’s incoming president, Peter Salovey.

“The stronger New Haven is, the easier it is for us to retain the brightest and best faculty and students,” he says. “And the stronger Yale is the more opportunities we have to build the economy. It’s a very virtuous cycle.”

— Karen Singer

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FALLEN HERO AWARD Leonard A. Fasano, MD

A Model of Old School Medicine The long and remarkable career of Leonard A. Fasano, MD

N

ew Haven lost one of its hometown heroes when, on July 31, 2011, Leonard A. Fasano, MD died at the Hospital of Saint Raphael at the age of 84.

Fasano, who earned his medical degree from New York Medical College in 1955, was the husband of Camille Librizzi Fasano, father of Valerie Maribella and State Sen. Leonard Fasano (R-34), and brother of Judge Roland D. Fasano, Victor Fasano and the late Eugene Fasano. He is also survived by six grandchildren.

Fasano, who was associated with both Yale-New Haven and Saint Raphael’s hospitals, established the Fasano Center for Internal Medicine at 980 Whalley Avenue, where he practiced internal medicine for more than half a century. The practice, now known as the Center for Internal Medicine, is headed by Kandiah Sritharan, MD. “My father was unbelievably supportive, no matter what you did,” says Len Fasano, the physician’s only son. “For

my sister Valerie and me, he was always there whenever you needed him. I think he always believed that people are extraordinarily important, no matter what their background or part of society they came from, and he taught me this. I guess that’s why I went into politics — to help people.”

Fasano says his father loved New Haven and Yale University. “He loved the traditions of Yale football,” notes Fasano, himself a Yale graduate who played football under legendary coach Carmen Cozza.

Fasano says his father didn’t mind that he chose law over medicine, though the younger Fasano was initially interested in medicine.

“He was always a frustrated lawyer,” says Fasano, noting that his own grandfather was a lawyer as well as his father’s brothers. “He always felt free to give legal advice because he felt he knew the law. He was part of that

generation that had respect for society, for politics, for judges and for lawyers. He always told me that every judge he treated was never called by their first name. It was always ‘Judge So-and-So.’ He felt that they earned that title and that respect.”

The younger Fasano revealed his interest in medicine later, when as a state senator he sponsored and helped to pass legislation to create a Connecticut Umbilical Cord Blood Collection Board to establish a statewide umbilical cord blood collection program. The technology allows families and individuals to tap into rich nutrients provided by umbilical cord blood for future use in many treatments as well as a source of stem cells that is an exact genetic match to a baby, with no risk of rejection.

“He loved to play tennis nonstop, every day, but he wasn’t a golfer,” says Fasano. “He was always up for a game of touch football, even into his late 70s. He loved Matt Sanchez, who plays for the New York Jets, though he’d be very disappointed today, seeing that he didn’t pan out [the Jets finished their 2012 campaign with a 6-10 record].

He loved the New York Giants as well and always loved Yale football, especially when I was playing for Yale. He was very close to Carm Cozza, whom he considered a very dear friend.”

Fasano says his father’s gentle nature was something his patients admired. “He was a doctor that people looked up to, maybe more so then than they do now,” adds Fasano. “But he never felt he was ever above anybody.

He talked to anybody from any part of society and I marveled at that ability in him. I think he showed his patients those qualities.”

“He was a very thoughtful diagnostician,” says Edith W. Kufta of New Haven, who was a patient of Fasano’s from 1964 until his death. “One of his patients told me that he was on the phone with Dr. Fasano one day talking about his own illness when his wife began coughing in the background. Dr. Fasano wanted to know how long she’d been coughing and told the man to bring his wife in. The man said that Dr. Fasano diagnosed her and cured her.

That was the kind of man he was.”

In one of her own experiences, Kufta’s daughter woke up with severe pain in her stomach so she took the girl to see her own doctor who then referred her to the emergency room at the hospital in New Haven. They failed to diagnose her condition so a friend recommended that Kufta bring her daughter to Fasano.

“He examined her and diagnosed her as having the grippe, an old-fashioned term” for influenza, says Kufta. “But he was right and after treating her, she was cured. He treated me for 47 years and always determined what was wrong with me. One time, I had a bad cough that went on for many days and went to see him. He examined me and discovered I had whooping cough.

“He actually reported it to one of the medical journals noting that several others of his older patients had it.

He feared that it was an epidemic among elderly people.

Eventually the journal editor agreed with him and alerted the rest of the medical community.”

The senior Fasano was ‘a doctor that people looked up to, maybe more so than they do now,’ says Len Fasano of his late father. ‘[H]e always believed that people are extraordinarily important, regardless of ‘their background or part of society they came from.’

“He was always interested in his patients’ concerns and talked to them about all aspects of their lives,” adds Kufta. “I’m sure that all of his patients will agree with me when I say he is sorely missed.”

— Thomas R. Violante

Congratulations Yale-New Haven Hospital salutes the 2012 Healthcare Heroes.

Your hard work and dedication are improving the quality of healthcare throughout the region.

www.ynhh.org

YNHH-1299 HCHeroAd.indd 1

JANUARY 2013 • HEALTHCARE HEROES

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Confronting a World of Hurt

NURSE OF THE YEAR Kelly Grimshaw Nurse, Yale New Haven Hospital Board of Directors, Doctors Without Borders

Doctors Without Borders nurse volunteer Kelly Grimshaw has traveled the globe to help those who can’t help themselves

H

eroism can often be characterized by the willingness do something for others in the face of danger. That much can safely be said of those who volunteer far and wide for Doctors Without Borders.

The privately-funded organization was started in France in 1971 (official name Médecins Sans Frontières [MSF]) as an impartial medical humanitarian organization providing care to people caught in the turmoil of armed conflicts, epidemics, malnutrition, natural disasters or simply dearth of available health care.

The group earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 1999, the same year Kelly Grimshaw joined. Currently a nursing educator in transplants at Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH), the 47-year-old Grimshaw always knew she wanted to be a nurse.

She earned her bachelor’s and master’s in nursing from the University of Connecticut (in 1988 and 1995, respectively), and was a nurse at YNHH —first on the surgical trauma floor and then the surgical intensive-care unit from 1989 to 1999, when she was struck by the urge to join something larger than herself.

“The drive was partially selfish,” Grimshaw recalls.

“An adventure spirit is in many who come to work for the organization. If you want adventure and want to get to know an area, you might as well get to be productive while you’re there. I could just backpack around the world and do my own thing, but I have a skill set that can help somebody else, so why not help out?”

It was while packing to volunteer in the Amazon rainforest for a small organization in Peru that she got the

call for what would be her first MSF mission: a year-long stint working at a tuberculosis clinic in Turkmenistan.

“I called my mother and told her, ‘Mom, I’m going to Peru for three weeks, I’m coming home for a day, and then I’m going to Turkmenistan for a year.

Can you pack up my house?”

Grimshaw would take part in nine missions as an active volunteer with MSF through 2009, ranging in length from six weeks to nearly 18 months (spent as a medical coordinator in Angola), and visiting countries as far out as China, Indonesia and many territories in Africa, assisting with civil and ethnic conflicts, the HIV pandemic, and outbreaks of cholera, Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever, meningitis and measles.

In Turkmenistan the MSF team was able to convert a derelict former hotel into a makeshift tuberculosis

26 November 2010

‘I could just backpack around the world and do my own thing, but I have a skill set that can help somebody else, so why not help out?’ says Grimshaw, pictured here in a pediatric ICU in Monrovia, Liberia.

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hospital. Even such makeshift infrastructure as that isn’t always available, and sometimes a tent or simply the back of a pickup truck would have to make do as a facility.

She’s worked with as many as 30 fellow expatriates, or as few as four.

She points to her work treating HIV as an example of how MSF has been able to diagnose and treat infections in settings with few resources.

“It used to be that we couldn’t diagnose HIV,” she explains. “Now it’s under every mango tree we can diagnose this disease. We’re bringing more and more of the high-tech [medical devices and procedures] to resource-poor settings, looking at telemedicine and bringing a full-on operating room. There are ventilators, surgical kits, sterilization rooms — it’s all there.”

But MSF volunteers often find themselves in unstable parts of the world, often in the middle of a conflict. The key to safety in most cases, Grimshaw says, is to be aware of what you’re doing and where you are at all times.

“It’s your own behavior” that’s key, she notes. “There are always pockets of suspicion and fear, and they have to be dealt with accordingly with patience and transparency.

[Let] people know who you are, where you are, why you’re there. Apologize for making mistakes; all the things you would do to let the community know you’re an honest person.”

Grimshaw recalls an instance shortly after 9/11 when she was working with victims of an ethnic conflict in Indonesia where people in town commonly wore “I Love Osama Bin Laden” T-shirts.

“There I was, an American citizen helping people who were not well-liked in the area. I wasn’t physically threatened, but it was mentally exhausting with people saying things to you constantly,” she says.

But reaction to her as an MSF worker has mostly been overwhelmingly positive, and she’s been rewarded with gratitude and generosity in most cases, whether in the form of an appreciative Thai police officer, a helpful Parisian taxi driver, or a Turkmen grandmother extending an invite for breakfast and vodka.

“It took me three days to tell my parents I was going to Sierra Leone, and then I’m not sleeping because I think I’m going to get shot as soon as I get there, that it will be complete chaos, and then I get to the airport and someone hands me a soda and says ‘Welcome to Sierra Leone,’” she recalls with a laugh.

Eventually, traveling on missions to dangerous destinations became routine: “I came home from Zambia, would take two days off and come back to work and people ask, ‘How was Zambia?’ and I’d just say, ‘Oh, it was fine.’ What else do you say?”

While Grimshaw went on her last mission with MSF in 2009, she remains a member of the organization’s board of directors, even as she enjoys being more stationary these days, enjoying her home in Cheshire.

“I do sometimes miss the issues around tropical medicine; it’s an interesting field of study,” she allows. “But trauma and transplant are also very interesting to me, so here I am. Whatever anyone’s facing is the most important issue to them; it’s always the patient in front of you who matters most. You just do the best you can where you are.

“Over time I found I wanted to be home,” says Grimshaw.

“Now I have a house, a pet, and I feel really fortunate that my good friends have stayed my good friends through this decade, and my parents are still here and healthy.”

and in 2011 they offered assistance to patients in 67 countries.

Grimshaw says the typical American physician who volunteers is either young, has little or no school debt, and hasn’t joined a practice yet, or is on the other side — debts paid, their own children through college, etc.

Grimshaw says MSF will continue to emphasize certain diseases — particularly HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria — and provide care for those infected, especially as funding sources come under stress.

“We’ve treated thousands of people [with HIV], and we’ve got big projects in Myanmar, South Africa, and Zambia’s program was handed over to their ministry of health.

The funding for HIV seems to be diminishing at a time when the medical profession has just really proven that treatment is prevention.”

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which raises money from donors every three years, pulled in only about half of its budgeted $20 billion for funding through 2013, and froze grants until after 2014 after uncovering a misuse of funds in 2011.

Grimshaw notes that every mission MSF dedicates itself to is based on first-hand account of the need for action.

Nothing happens unless they’ve seen it for themselves, and oftentimes being there is key simply to maintain awareness, particularly when fighting diseases like HIV. “Our hope is that [research and development] in the world is driven by what needs are out there, and not by other entities,” she says. “One of the ways we can advocate for that is to be there on the ground.”

There are typically between 27,000 and 30,000 Doctors Without Borders volunteers in the field at any given time,

A healthy community starts with a healthy commitment.

— John Mordecai

That’s why we applaud Business New Haven’s 2012 Healthcare Heroes. Their vision and leadership improve the quality of life in our community. After all, a healthy community is everyone’s responsibility.

We believe all of us working together can help to make our community stronger … better … healthier.

And we’re just committed to doing our part.

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JANUARY 2013 • HEALTHCARE HEROES

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ADVANCEMENT OF HEALTH CARE AWARD Dr. David Leffell Dermatologist, Researcher, CEO Yale Medical Group

T

hree decades ago, some physicians began noticing unusual-looking skin lesions on a substantial number of male patients. David Leffell was one of those doctors.

“In the early 1980s I was in New York, at [Memorial] Sloane-Kettering [Cancer Center],” Leffell recalls. “I was seeing men coming in with purple spots” — cancerous tumors that soon would become known beyond the medical community by their technical identification: Kaposi’s sarcoma.

“They were people with HIV,” explains Leffell, who conducted research on what would become a major medical focus. “It was clear to me that was an exciting new area.”

That experience is what sparked Leffell’s interest in dermatology. Currently one of the most renowned

Skin in the Game Dermatologist David Leffell has declared war on skin cancer

physicians in his field, his work revolves around prevention, treatment and diagnosis of skin cancer.

satisfaction ratings. “We had a great deal of success,” he notes.

Today Leffell is deputy dean for clinical affairs at the Yale School of Medicine, and for the past 15 years he’s headed the Yale Medical Group — one of the largest faculty practices in the country. The organization offers care in more than 100 specialties.

For example, patients noted less than total satisfaction with something so fundamental it could easily be overlooked by quality-assurance personnel: the telephone system.

“The purpose is to oversee strategies for the state. That’s been my big role for 15 years,” says Leffell, whose tenure concluded last year.

When he first took the position he sought to make the group better.

“At that time Yale was primarily a research medical school.

I wanted to make it more patient [oriented].” Among initiatives instituted under Leffell’s watch were patient-

“There’s always been a problem with people getting through by phone. [So] we implemented a monitoring system,” says Leffell.

For inpatients, a common source of dissatisfaction is food, and for office-based practices, “The No. 1 complaint is parking,” Leffell notes. Such information might not be known — and improvements made — without the patient-satisfaction ratings.

“So we’ve made great strides,” Leffell says.

PHOTO: TOM VIOLANTE

Leffell supports legislation to regulate use of tanning beds by minors. ‘We are ignoring, damaging and hurting our children,’ he says, ‘and I’m the one who sees the end result.’

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Photo©JimFiora

“Transition is essential to stay alive,” he adds, and the time has come for “new blood” to head the group. He still has ideas about the course of the group’s future, however.

As a new CEO of the Yale Medical Group begins to assess needs and devise ways of addressing those needs, Leffell says he’d like to “see a new strategy laid out. I’d like to see physicians and other providers, such as nurse practitioners, take more of a leadership role in health care.”

Leffell also has helped to advance the field of dermatology through research and invention. He was instrumental in the discovery of the skin cancer gene PTCH and the protein it is involved in coding, and holds joint patents for that discovery. He also holds a patent for a medical instrument that measures aging of the skin. In addition, Leffell has developed a streamlined method for treating vitiligo surgically.

Leffell is also a prolific author, having written or co-written more than 120 published works. Among them is Manual of Skin Surgery, and Fitzpatrick’s Dermatology in General Medicine, a leading dermatology textbook which Leffell edited. Leffell’s book Total Skin: The Definitive Guide to Whole Skin Care for Life was published in 2000.

Refreshingly absent of medical jargon, it was written as a handy education tool about skin health for the general public.

It has been widely used by laypersons as a reader-friendly reference book.

Born and raised in Montreal, Leffell came to the United States for undergraduate study at Yale. He returned to Canada to earn his medical degree at McGill University in Montreal. He came back to Yale in 1988 to join the School of Medicine faculty as an assistant professor.

ST. VINCENT’S Continued From Page 30 says Marcus. Most urgent maladies have included diabetes, heart disease, cancer and asthma.

A high level of breast cancer, as well as disparities among minority patients, prompted the health center to augment its preventive-care offerings. A mobile mammography screening, for example, increases screening access for underserved populations, according to Marcus.

Community assessments sometimes uncover surprises. Marcus says he underestimated the behavioral needs of the community until they were brought to light through analyzed surveys.

After that, says Marcus, “We certainly put more resources into place.” For example, “We opened up a separate behavioral health section in our emergency department. That was very difficult because behavioral health patients require

JANUARY 2013 • HEALTHCARE HEROES

Leffell and his family (he is a married father of two) have residences in New Haven and the Litchfield County town of Norfolk. Active in the local community, he extends himself beyond the medical field. He is, for example, a board member of New Haven’s Artspace and of Connecticut Public Television, and is also a Hopkins School trustee.

Leffell has even ventured into photography. A 2011 coffee table book, Connecticut Pastoral, designed by Leffell’s niece, Rebecca Leffell, features his striking scenic photographs of locations across the state.

“One of my pastimes is photography,” says Leffell. He gives the book to people who make charitable donations to special causes.

Among causes about which Leffell is most adamant is the dermatological harm that can be caused by tanning salons.

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“Far and away the most important cause of skin cancer is ultraviolet radiation,” he notes.

Leffell has fought vigorously for legislation that would require parental consent for minors to utilize tanning facilities. However, his advocacy has been met with resistance from some politicians and others set squarely against such legislation.

“So that was my introduction to politics,” say Leffell, who maintains such legislation is needed.

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“We are ignoring, damaging and hurting our children” without it, he says, “and I’m the one who sees the end result. I’m the one who has to operate on them.”

— Felicia Hunter

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different types of attention — a different skill set to help them.”

Being able to measure success tangibly is one of the rewarding aspects of being part of St. Vincent’s administration, notes Davis. Take, for example, those safety improvements. In situations where so much can happen and so many variables are involved, even incremental changes can be crucial.

“I wanted to change the notion that it was given that a patient on a ventilator gets pneumonia” — a not uncommon development in hospitals. “In three and a half years,” says Davis, “we haven’t had a patient on a ventilator get pneumonia.

“There’s something called birth trauma [mechanical injury during the birth process] that happens to babies,” Davis adds. She proudly notes, “We haven’t had a birth trauma in over four and a half years.”

— Felicia Hunter

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COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD St. Vincent’s Medical Center CEO, Susan Davis Stuart Marcus, President

A Commitment to Caring In 1905 St. Vincent’s was founded by the Daughters of Charity — which has remained its watchword ever since

S

t. Vincent’s Medical Center’s mission to improve its hospital safety undertaken a few yeas ago is an illustrative indicator of the kind of service-oriented management style in which it drapes itself. For precedent, the hospital consulted the rigorously precise nuclear power industry.

“Health care needs to learn some lessons from other industries that have significantly improved safety” says medical center CEO Susan Davis. When Davis arrived at the Bridgeport hospital ten years ago, one of the primary attractions for her was the dedication to providing service to indigent populations while continuing to strive for improvement.

“What was great was the hospital’s commitment and incredible caring for the poor and vulnerable,” says Davis.

“There were opportunities I saw to improve the patient experience, and strengthen safety and quality of care.”

That stress on compassionate and quality patient attention is what has earned St. Vincent’s a solid reputation as a leader in health care. Consumer Reports has recognized it as being among the top three Connecticut hospitals for safety, Professional Research Consultants named it a National Excellence in Healthcare GOLD Award recipient in 2010, and in 2012 the Connecticut Hospital Association gave the center its John D. Thompson Award for safety, among other accolades.

St. Vincent’s is a member of Ascension Health, the country’s most expansive Catholic non-profit health-care system.

It opened in 1905 after the Daughters of Charity, a women’s religious group, conducted a needs-assessment.

With 473 beds in its Bridgeport hospital and 76 beds at a Westport inpatient psychiatric facility, St. Vincent’s also

maintains specialty and satellite offerings that include urgent care/walk-in centers. behavioral health services, specialty needs services, St. Vincent’s College, the Michael J. Daly Emergency Department and the new Elizabeth M. Pfriem Swim Center for Cancer Care.

An exciting development for administrators is the medical center’s partnership with Quinnipiac University. Last year the center was named primary clinical partner with Quinnipiac’s new Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, which will matriculate its inaugural class this September.

“That’s something I personally spearheaded,” says St. Vincent President Stuart Marcus, MD. “Quinnipiac chose us as their primary teaching hospital. Having medical students here will allow us to expand our community focus. There’s nothing more important than training tomorrow’s physicians.”

“That’s really exciting, to think that we’ll have a role in training medical students,” adds Davis. “The focus with Quinnipiac is really primary care.” The center is determined to keep tabs on its quality of care. To help do this, a Patient & Family Advisory Board was established in 2007. The group is charged with ensuring that care is focused on patients and their families, that there’s open communication between patients and staff about issues and concerns, maintaining an atmosphere of respect and building patient satisfaction, and strengthening community ties, among other responsibilities.

General governance of care is guided by the medical center’s adherence to the National Council of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services guidelines. In its mission statement the center stresses its commitment to “the healing ministry of Jesus.” It aims to “provide quality, holistic care to all faiths with special concerns for those who are poor, vulnerable and underserved.” That was a major draw for Marcus when he considered joining the St. Vincent’s staff.

“One of the reasons I came to St. Vincent’s is the community focus regardless of the [patient’s] ability to pay,” he says. “The mission drives the strategy and the operations and the culture at the hospital.

“Each person is a person. Bridgeport is the largest city in Connecticut and the poorest city in Connecticut. It’s a very diverse community,” says Marcus, who admires “St. Vincent’s ability to treat all patients along the spectrum of that diversity.”

Marcus holds a unique administrative perspective. Like Davis — a registered nurse — Marcus, a physician, brings a practitioner’s viewpoint to medical center decisionmaking.

St. Vincent CEO Susan Davis and President Stuart Marcus tout the hospital’s partnership with the new Quinnipiac University medical school as well as its commitment to holistic treatment of the community, especially the poor and those unable to pay for care

“I came here in 2006 because of the cancer center,” Marcus says. “Another draw here is the holistic care,” he adds, citing the Swim Across the Sound fundraiser as particularly impacting.

“It’s an example of how St. Vincent’s offers holistic care — mind, body and spirit. Therapeutic massage, yoga, aquatherapy, all are offered because of funds raised by the Swim.”Following in line with that first needs assessment by the Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent’s continues to gauge community needs through regular surveys.

“We look at some of the most pressing needs in the community and put services in place to meet the needs,” Continued on page 29

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Congratulates the following 2012 Health Care Heroes:

Educator of the Year

DR. BRUCE KOEPPEN

Founding Dean of Quinnipiac’s Frank H. Netter School of Medicine Corporate Achievement

PATRICK CHARMEL CEO, Griffin Hospital

Health Care Professional

GLENN ELIA CEO, Connecticut Orthopaedic Community Service, Corporate

ST. VINCENT’S MEDICAL CENTER These awards identify distinguished leaders in the health care industry who, through dedication to their practice and their patients, exemplify what it means to be heroes.

Quinnipiac University | Hamden, CT www.quinnipiac.edu

You put your heart into helping others

and it shows.

Congratulations to this year’s Health Care Heroes, outstanding professionals who are improving lives throughout Greater New Haven. We are proud to honor your achievements in the health care field.

www.connecticare.com Š 2013 ConnectiCare, Inc. & Affiliates