Memorial Sloan Kettering Masterminds the Future of Patient-Focused Care

NYC's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center will open its outpatient surgery center in January.
Image: Unsplash.com

Nobody likes going to the hospital—especially when it’s for something big and scary, like cancer. Sanitary white walls, humming machinery, woozy patients and worried family members—no thanks! But one hospital is aiming to make your visit quicker, friendlier, and more comfortable even if you’re suffering from a serious illness.

The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan’s Upper East Side will open its $200 million new outpatient surgery center this January. With the latest technology, room for future innovations, and a gorgeous design by Perkins Eastman and ICRAVE, the Josie Robertson Surgery Center will completely redefine what it means to go to the hospital.

Thanks to an active board including Bill E Ford (General Atlantic), James Robinson (RRE Ventures LLC), and Charles Sawyers (The Column Group LLC), the new Surgery Center will not only look great; it will comfort both patients and their families, as well as making use of the cutting edge of healthcare technology (think robots in surgery and iPads available for patient use!).

One big technological win is that patients will receive plastic tracking badges as soon as they arrive. These badges will collect data about how much the patients can move around after surgery and how well they’re recovering. That’s good not just for the patient and their doctor, but also for useful insight into future patient needs.

As for patients’ families, they’ll have plenty of support as well, including mobile device charging stations and an Xbox nook for fitness activities in the waiting room. The building design, inspired by hotel lobbies and co-working spaces, will put them at ease during a stressful time.

And we’re talking serious surgery here—say, a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction—performed with state-of-the-art equipment and in a healthy, soothing environment that gets patients in and out within a day.

JRSC exists partly because Memorial Sloan Kettering’s main campus is running out of room. But it’s also meant to be a place where medical staff can innovate and really serve their patients face-to-face and in a personal way.

“There’s nothing else like this that I’ve ever heard of,” said Brett Simon, and anesthesiologist and the JRSC’s director. He also pointed out his team’s dedication to meaningful patient interaction and support: “While it might not be that hard, medically, to get someone out the door, having them emotionally and spiritually happy and feeling supported is really a big deal.”

Mount Sinai Feels the Holiday Cheer with $21 Million in Donations

Mount Sinai Hospital is in New York City.

Hospitals are aging. Unfortunately, patients are, too. As the baby boomer generation ages, hospitals are seeing a huge influx of patients that are older, sicker, and need more care. The problem is that many hospitals themselves are running short on funding and have been for some time. This means that facilities are becoming outdated and are less able to afford quality care in times of need (which, these days, is pretty much all the time).

Mount Sinai Hospital is an internationally acclaimed tertiary-care teaching facility and hospital. It is joined with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Kravis Children’s Hospital at Mount Sinai in the overarching Mount Sinai Health System. The hospital is supported by a number of prestigious businesspeople, including James Tisch, Henry Kravis, Carl Icahn, and Kenneth Mehlman.

Luckily, thanks to generous individuals, hospitals like Mount Sinai are able to update their facilities. Mount Sinai recently received a generous $6 million donation from Jay and Barbara Hennick, money that will go toward updating the hospital’s 40-year-old building. The hospital will build a brand new healing and respite area with six new floors, 19 state-of-the-art operating rooms, eight modernized inpatient unites, and even a new neonatal unit.

Generous donations from Reisman, Schwartz, and the Hennicks
will allow the hospital to update its facilities and research programs.
Image: Shutterstock

And more recently, the hospital received a $15 million donation from Indigo Books founder Heather Reisman and her husband, Gerald Schwartz, who is founder and CEO of Onex Corp. This donation will enable the hospital to more than double the space of the emergency care center and make it much more senior friendly. Both the $6 million and the $15 million donations are a part of the hospital's campaign to raise $500 million for upgrades to the facilities and research programs.

“We are looking after patients that are sicker than before and we are dealing with more complex issues than before,” said vice-president of patient experience Matthew Morgan. “We’ve had to begin modernizing our building to deal with the volume and complexities of our population.”

Mount Sinai is one of many hospitals planning for the future and putting generous donations to good use. Recently, I wrote about another amazing hospital donation—a $20 million gift from the Dalio Foundation to the New York Presbyterian Hospital and the Weill Cornell Medical College. In that case, the money will be used to launch a brand new cardiovascular center.

Despite the fact that times have been hard on hospitals in recent years, it’s good to see that at least a handful are able to put money to good use and create better and more innovative care facilities.