LIJ Valley Stream to welcome new medical director

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Dr. Corey Karlin-Zysman was associate medical director at Northwell Health’s Long Island Jewish Medical Center, in New Hyde Park, when the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit New York in March.

At the time, she said, LIJ was among the hardest-hit hospitals in the country, treating more than 900 patients at a medical center designed for 589. Her responsibilities were manifold, including helping to manage an increasingly overwhelming caseload and ensuring medical staff safety while balancing the various care regimens of patients suffering from a disease with many unknowns.

“I couldn’t help but be forced to become specialized, coming from a place hit as hard as we were,” Karlin-Zysman, 44, recalled. 

Colleagues said she played an integral role in getting the team through the crisis. “LIJ probably went through the most difficult time it has ever gone through, and she was part of the leadership team that really got LIJ Medical Center through, and had us come out stronger on the other side,” Dr. Nancy Kwon, vice chairwoman of emergency medicine at the hospital, said.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better teammate,” said the center’s medical director, Dr. Richard Schwarz, recalling the long weeks that the two worked to keep the hospital and staff from buckling under the pressure. 

Now, starting Dec. 7, Karlin-Zysman will help lead LIJ in Valley Stream as medical director, moving to Northwell’s sister hospital at a time when coronavirus cases are starting to surge. 

Kwon said her colleague is ready, noting, “I think she’s very prepared, she’s peerless, she has great flexibility, and she’s ready to step up to the most difficult of challenges, as evidenced by everything she’s done so far in her career and during the pandemic.”

“She’ll do wonderfully,” Schwarz said. “I’ll miss her tremendously. She’s been a great asset and a joy to work with. She’s more than ready for this position.”

While Karlin-Zysman now manages the staff and procedures for a multi-million-dollar medical facility, she said it all began when she was given the opportunity to dissect a frog in second grade. She grew up in Islip. Her teacher one day announced the school had extra frogs to dissect. The only requirement was that the students needed to bring their own jars to hold the specimens. Worried there would be too many takers, she brought one from home the next day. She was the only one to take up the offer.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a doctor,” she said. “It started from more of a place of scientific curiosity, and as I got older, I think I started to round it out and see it from more of a people place. How cool is it to be able to fix someone, to make them better?”

She studied pre-medicine at Stanford University in California and received her medical degree from the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in 2003.

While completing her residency at Brown University in 2006, her parents called to see if she could find a job closer to home on Long Island. They missed her.

“I cold-called LIJ Medical Center, interviewed and got the job on the spot,” Karlin-Zysman recalled. She has worked there ever since, and has “never looked back,” she said.

Although she never anticipated working in a leadership role as a doctor, specializing in a fledgling area of study known as hospital medicine — which focuses on the logistics of medicinal treatment in a hospital — within six months of working at the medical center she was made associate site director of hospital medicine, and has continued to work her way up since.

Leadership in the medical field, Karlin-Zysman said, is a radically different experience than working as a doctor. “When you’re a doctor, you’re a bit of an independent operator,” she explained. “It’s you and your patient, and that’s your world, that’s your bubble.”

When managing a hospital, however, “You have to expand outside that bubble,” she said, and bridge various disciplines, whether it be those of different department heads, nurse managers and business-finance executives, to keep the operation running smoothly.

While it’s not for everyone, Karlin-Zysman said she finds it rewarding. “What I like is being someone who is there to help you achieve your goals,” she said. “How can I help you meet them, what processes and workflows can I help you create and what resources can I get you?

“I can speak doctor and translate that to administrators, finance people and nursing,” she continued, “and be that essential go-between and find the mutual win.”

“She’s an amazing leader, an outstanding leader,” Kwon said, adding that that while Karlin-Zysman is often open to input from her team members, she knows when to make a final decision. The two have worked together since she came on in 2013 as associate chairwoman of emergency medicine at LIJ Medical Center.

“She tries to look at things from all sides,” Kwon said. “It’s very bittersweet because she’s leaving us, but we know she’s the type of person who stays in touch, and we know we can all pick up the phone and ask for help even though she’s at a different hospital.”

In a letter to the LIJ Valley Stream staff, Executive Director David Seligman thanked the outgoing medical director, Dr. Joseph Marino, for his service to the hospital and welcomed Karlin-Zysman. Marino had served in the role since 2010, and is becoming Northwell’s senior vice president for anesthesia services.

“Throughout her tenure at Northwell, Corey has continually been recognized for clinical, teaching and research excellence,” Seligman said, listing a number of her accolades. “. . . In her new role, Corey will oversee and drive clinical quality and efficiency improvements while partnering with our team to propel innovation, programmatic development and a patient-centered culture at LIJ Valley Stream.”

In addition to tackling the coronavirus, which Karlin-Zysman said Northwell is more equipped to handle this time around, she said she looks forward to leveraging her expertise in hospital medicine to further improve efficiency at the Valley Stream hospital. 

And in a field in which women are typically underrepresented in leadership roles — according to a 2020 report from McKinsey & Co., an industry consultancy firm, women comprise 30 percent of medical corporate leadership, despite greater parity in other areas of medicine — Karlin-Zysman said she is proud to serve as a role-model for others.

Married, with two young children and living in Great Neck, she said that managing her home and work life has come with its own set of challenges, but it was important for her to push through.

“It’s a difficult balance to strike,” she said, “but if you want it, you can achieve it.”