Newark Beth Israel Promotes Community Wellness

President and CEO of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center & Children’s Hospital of New Jersey, Darrell Terry, explains how the hospital is promoting wellness in the community through programs such as The Beth Greenhouse.

12/9/16 #1929

Excerpt:

"We're pleased to be joined by Darrell Terry Senior, president and chief executive officer of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center and Children's Hospital of New Jersey. Good to see you Darrell. Good to see you Steve. Let's talk healthcare. What was interesting at your organization, it's not just healthcare per se, it's tied very directly to the community. We were talking with Barry Ostrowski, who is the CEO of the entire system, about these issues. Let's talk about the community involvement first. What's Hire Newark? Hire Newark is an initiative that was started with the mayor's office, but joined in with RWJBarnabas Health and Newark Beth Israel Medical Center specifically. We have nine employer partners that work together to hire Newark residents. It is a six week training program, where we... we find people who are hard to employ, and we give them work skills, and training skills, and interviewing skills, but the neat thing about it is at the conclusion of the program, there's a job waiting for them. That's a big deal. I remember there was a community advisory board, meaning I was pleased to moderate at Newark Beth, where we actually announced this program, and it had a real big impact on hiring, training, training and hiring people in the community, by the way, let's make it clear that Newark Beth is tied to the
larger RWJBarnabas Health system, could you make it clear where the Newark Beth footprint is? So Newark Beth Israel is one of the eleven acute care hospitals of RWJBarnabas Health. We're in the South Ward of Newark, it's Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, it's a 665 bed licensed... licensed bed hospital with the Children's Hospital of New Jersey. Who comes into the Beth? We have, so we have patients from all over New Jersey for our tertiary programs. The advance lung program, the advance cardiac... this past Saturday, I was at a heart and soul walk, where we had a bunch... we had a lot of heart transplant patients who walked to help other heart transplant patients. They're called tertiary. By the way, explain that, what that means? So it's just high end, high tech services, advance services. So many places have heart surgery, or lung surgery, but we have heart transplant, we have the whole... Hmm. We have all the available heart remedies, if you will, available. But the other side of this for Newark Beth Israel is that the charity care piece is big, meaning those who often lack the economic means will come to Newark Beth, make that clear. Well... Who is that population? It was a larger charity care population before the Affordable Care Act. Hmm. So we did exactly what was contemplated under the Affordable Care Act..."