NUMC enters a ‘new era’ with Northwell partnership

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Nassau University Medical Center is teaming up with Northwell Health for a six-month period in which the two bodies will seek to improve the financial condition and patient care at the safety net hospital.

Roughly 50 Northwell employees will work to develop a five-year plan aimed at providing quality care to the East Meadow hospital’s patients, many of who are on Medicare, Medicaid or no insurance at all.

George Tsunis, the chairman of the NUMC parent company NuHealth, called this a “new era,” adding that Northwell “brings a level of expertise, a level of accomplishment and a track record of putting patients first and delivering quality medical care on Long Island.”

The partnership launched on Nov. 2 with the appointment of interim president and Chief Executive Officer Winnie Mack, who is also Northwell Health’s senior vice president of health system operations.

Tsunis called the change in leadership a “welcome home” for Mack, who once worked as a nurse at NUMC before working in leadership positions at Franklin Square General Hospital and Southside Hospital in Bayside. Both hospitals overcame their own financial challenges during her tenure. She will also be the first CEO of NUMC who has prior experience in such a role.

Tsunis said that the NuHealth board and Northwell Health officials have been discussing the partnership “in earnest” for three weeks, but some assistance has been long-needed. “We need to make sure that we’re not only providing the most outstanding care for those people, because that is our mission,” he said, “but we also need to make sure that we’re acting responsibly for a sustainability point of view . . . that we’re responsible of tax payer dollars [and] that we’re making the proper investments so that NUMC could be around for years to come.”

While the partnership will last six months, the NuHealth chair said that it could always be extended. “I think everyone is optimistic,” he said.