St. John’s/EHS Going Forward
By Dan Guarino
“I’m the Chief Executive Officer of Episcopal Health Services,” Dr. Donald Morrish explains. “‘EHS.’ We like ‘EHS’ because it’s easier to say. But also, ‘EHS,’” he adds, “is something different. It really represents the transition of healthcare from more than just the hospital. It really has expanded beyond the hospital itself.” Indeed, since St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, then St. Joseph’s, opened in 1905, the medical field, healthcare, and role of hospitals themselves have undergone transformative shifts in thinking. One shift, as one St. John’s Episcopal Hospital spokesperson noted years ago, is from residents having to come to the “big building,” the hospital, to bringing healthcare and services out to the community.
Over nearly 120 years of service, St. John’s has not only tended to the residents of the Rockaways and Broad Channel, the Five Towns, southern Queens and southwestern Nassau, but has been a staple of the community. With the closure of Peninsula Hospital in 2012, it is also vitally now the only such medical facility on the peninsula.
Appointed this year as CEO, Dr. Morrish has been with EHS since 2013, first as Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology, then as Executive Vice President/Chief Medical Officer (CMO). He has been a practicing obstetrician/gynecologist for the past 25 years.
As CMO, EHS notes, he “led the hospital’s strategic agenda to deliver innovative healthcare … (and) led successful teams that improved quality, patient safety and satisfaction measures for the health system.”
“If you take a look at healthcare across the country,” Morrish states, “you’ll see it’s moving from inpatient to ambulatory care.”
That is, a shift towards medical services which can be provided on an outpatient basis, without requiring a stay at a hospital or another facility.
He points to his predecessor, CEO Gerard M. Walsh, as being ahead of the curve in laying the groundwork for the outreach and expansion EHS continues today. “Over the last four to five years, we’ve seen the change. The model of care we had was not working,” he says. Under Walsh, “the institution had the great foresight to start building.”
“So anyone can get their care here,” Morrish says. “You’re the average person. You want to go down the street to see your doctor. You don’t want to have to come down to the hospital.”
He points to several EHS outlets, some more recently open, others in the works, designed to make a variety of specialties more accessible beyond the hospital. One of which, appropriately the Walsh Ambulatory Pavilion, is slated to open in early 2025, where a number of specialties, such as wound care, oncology, imaging, endoscopy, and behavioral health, will be moving out of the hospital building and elsewhere, and into the new facility.
Other specialties are being shifted to the more newly opened Clinical Learning Center, which will also serve as a clinical training ground for medical students from all over, enhancing their skills, which they may later add to EHS’s talent pool.
Further afield is St. John’s Medical Group, bringing primary care, dermatology, orthopedics, podiatry, cardiology, behavioral health, physical, occupational and speech therapy and many more medical services, plus coming soon “Primary Care Express,” to Beach 105th Street and Rockaway Beach Blvd.
It is also home to the Margaret O. Carpenter Women’s Health Center, providing a full care range to support women specific health needs. Noting the importance of EHS’s comprehensive women’s healthcare initiatives, Dr. Morrish states, “These are the individuals who sacrifice their needs for the rest of us.”
The hospital itself will also soon feature a state-of-the-art new Labor, Delivery, Recovery and Postpartum unit to improve mothers’ treatment, the birthing experience and infant health and mortality outcomes.
Morrish also notes the shift in overall treatment approaches. “We see you as an individual, not just a collection of diseases,” and accordingly develop “a system that takes care of the whole patient, that lowers the risks, manages life changes, medications, builds relationships and support. When people can see their primary care physician,” instead of dropping into an ER or urgent care, seeing a different doctor each time, spot treating illnesses, “we see better outcomes.”
Offering a variety of patient-centered services also ensures continuity of care, where all medical care can work together.
He also stresses preventative medicine. “Our population deserves screening before needed,” where conditions and pre-conditions can be treated far more effectively before they become more full-blown. Using diabetes, which effects many in the Rockaway community, as an example, he points to preventative adjustment of lifestyles, diet and medication early on where more options and better outcomes are available, as opposed, say, to later treatment with dialysis, where they are not.
EHS has launched several initiatives to bring care out to the community. This year they teamed up with barbershops to bring blood pressure and A1C screenings directly to men across the peninsula, noting men in general do not prioritize healthcare. They also launched a year-long outreach program to address hypertension and diabetes 2, where participants benefit from weight loss, improved health, reduced risk of diabetes, peer support and trained lifestyle coaches.
“With our Community Health van, we’re going to the community,” Dr. Morrish says. “We go to make sure we have better social determinants. To make sure as much as we can that people have a safe place to live, can put food on the table and have a good, productive life” to support better health. The unit educates on things like quitting smoking, nutrition, asthma and stroke prevention, handles referrals and vaccinations and does screenings for things like glucose, cholesterol and depression.
“A growing population,” he adds, “is going to need a growing healthcare system.” To that end, they have increasingly worked to expand partnerships and build from bottom up, starting with what the community needs.
But Dr. Morrish acknowledges, “There is the expectation that the hospital may not meet the expectations. But when’s the last time you were here, that you tried us?
“Do we have work to do? Absolutely.”
Still, he says, “you want to hear what patients have to say about you. What their families say about you. But if we listen, we’ll get there.”
Photos by Dan Guarino.