Clinical
and Administrative Overview
Andrew E. Skodol, M.D.
Deputy Director
The year 2000 was one of transition
for PI Administration. On January 13th, I became Deputy Director,
assuming the duties and responsibilities of Jack Gorman, who stepped down
to devote more time as Director of the Lieber Center for the Study of
Schizophrenia. The Clinical Director, David Strauss, took over for the
late Jack Rainer and me, as Chair of PI's IRB, a position justly elevated
to full-time in recognition of the increasing resources needed to fully
protect the rights and welfare of our research subjects. One of my first
tasks was to head a search committee for a new Clinical Director. That
process brought David Hellerstein from Beth Israel Hospital in New York.
David Hellerstein and I spent the rest of the year learning on the job. We had two superb teachers in the art of hospital administration: John Oldham and Steve Papp. We both consulted frequently with David Strauss, for another "veteran's" perspective. (I traded heavily on a few IRB words of wisdom.) As we settled in, we received our first dose of administrative reality, in the form of the JCAHO Survey.
As the year wound to a close, we had been wonderfully prepped for the February 2001 event, along with the entire PI clinical, administrative, and support staff, by Amy Bennett-Staub. (It is no secret, at the time of this report's publication, that PI's JCAHO star once again shined brightly, with glittering scores of 100 for hospital services and 99 for behavioral health outpatient services!)
PI's clinical and research services continued to provide first-rate clinical care and to produce new research findings in 2000. In all, there were 489 inpatient admissions during the year. The Schizophrenia Research Unit, under the direction of Roberto Gil, supported 15 different IRB approved research protocols. The General Clinical Research Unit, led by Mary Bongiovi Garcia, had 20 active protocols running, from seven different research groups, including several new protocols to test new treatments for substance abuse. The Washington Heights Community Service outpatient clinics maintained an average census of 991 patients and delivered 51,077 outpatient visits/services, while the inpatient unit, under Ewald Horwath, admitted 266 patients from the community The Children's Day Unit, led by Bruce Waslick, was up and running with a number of new studies. During the year, extended programming was initiated for inpatient units for evenings and weekends, with multidisciplinary staffing, and utilization of the patient and family library grew dramatically. All three inpatient services also continued to serve the educational mission of the Institute by functioning as major sites for the clinical training of psychiatric residents and fellows; psychology interns; and medical, social work, and OT/RT students. Marcia Michaelson, Helle Thorning, and Matt Gold continue to lead Nursing, Social Work, and OT/RT, respectively, in providing the best in clinical care to PI's patients.
Working day-to-day at PI, it is easy to take for granted our beautiful, safe, smoothly-operating, state-of-the-art research facility, without fully appreciating the efforts, often behind the scenes, of the people who make it all work. As Deputy Director, I have had the opportunity to see close at hand the stellar operations of Safety, Engineering, Housekeeping, the Business Office, Information Technology and the Pharmacy and would like to express my gratitude to Willie Herriot, Peter Reynolds, Harold Jones, Hal Seligson, Gerry Segal, and R.B. MacArthur and their staffs for jobs well done.
In all, year 2000 provided many
examples of why PI continues to be the best psychiatric research facility
on earth!
Dr. Andrew Skodol, left, and Dr. John Mann
|
Steven M.
Papp, M.B.A. |
David J.
Hellerstein, M.D.
|
|
Donald
F. Klein, M.D.
Director, Office of Research and Development
|
Amy Bennett-Staub, R.N.,
M.P.A |
