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Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

By Daniel Dunaief

Like so many others, Ken Kaushansky had to alter his plans when the pandemic hit last March. Kaushansky had expected to retire after over 10 years as Dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University and the Senior Vice President of Health Sciences, but the public health needs of the moment, particularly on Long Island which became an early epicenter for the disease, demanded his attention.

“Now that COVID hopefully is coming under control, it seems more logical” to retire this year, Kaushansky said in a wide-ranging interview about the pandemic, his career, and the medical school. In January, he stepped down as the dean, while he plans to retire as Senior Vice President of Health Sciences at the end of June.

Views on the Pandemic

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

Looking back at the immediate challenges in the first few months, Kaushansky said SBU did “extremely well” in caring for patients who were battling COVID-19 and was gratified by the school’s effort to catalog and understand the disease. “I’m very proud that we’ve been able to study this infection on all sorts of levels and make a real impact that has helped others,” he said.

Early on, as the medical team at Stony Brook met, Kaushansky urged the hospital to study COVID “to the hilt” and to “extract every little bit of data we can. We must keep all that data on all these patients.”

Indeed, Stony Brook has created a database that continues to grow of close to 10,000 people, which includes 3,000 inpatients, 4,000 who weren’t sick enough for hospital admission, and around 3,000 who thought they had the disease, but had other illnesses. “We’ve learned a ton from that, and it’s not just learning for learning’s sake,” Kaushansky said. The demand for the use of the database is so high that a steering committee is reviewing proposals. 

Stony Brook had heard from doctors in Italy that COVID patients were having problems with blood clotting. This symptom was particularly meaningful to Kaushansky, who is a hematologist.

SBU studied the symptoms and “did a trial to see if aggressive anticoagulants would produce better outcomes” than the standard of care at the time, he said. “Our [intensive care unit] patients who were on this more aggressive anticoagulation protocols had half the mortality” of other patients, so the hospital “quickly adopted all of our care” to the more effective approach.

The hospital preemptively used biomarkers to determine who should and should not get aggressive anticoagulation. A subsequent study using the database confirmed the school’s early conclusion. Stony Brook published over 150 papers on the structure of the virus, clinical observations, sociological interventions, and a host of other areas, according to Kaushansky.

Carol Gomes, Chief Executive Officer of Stony Brook University Hospital, appreciated Kaushansky’s hands on approach, which included participating in daily calls as part of the hospital incident command center.

She likened Kaushansky to an orchestra leader, coordinating the research and patient care, making sure there was “no duplication of effort.”

Kaushansky believes federal research funding agencies and policy makers will recognize the importance of gathering information about this pandemic to treat future patients who might battle against variants and to provide a playbook for other health threats. “We really do need to prepare for the next one” as this is the third and deadliest of three coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS, he said.

Vaccines

As for vaccines, Kaushansky said Stony Brook was making it as “convenient as we can” to get a vaccination for health care workers. As of about a month ago, over 80 percent of Stony Brook’s health care workers had been vaccinated.

The black and brown communities have benefited from seeing leaders and role models receiving the vaccine. “This is beginning to erode the mistrust,” said Kaushansky, which developed as a byproduct of the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which black men with syphilis did not receive penicillin despite its availability as an effective treatment.

Kaushansky added that a concern he’s heard from a range of people is that the vaccine was developed too quickly and that the side effects could be problematic. He cited the simultaneous steps doctors, pharmaceutical companies and others took to accelerate a process that didn’t leave out any of those steps.

Kaushansky participates in a group email interaction with prominent European hematologists. Looking at the data for the Astrazeneca vaccine, these researchers have calculated that anywhere from one in 500,000 to one in a million have developed blood clots.

“Not a single person on this mass email believes that they should stop the Astrazeneca vaccines for that kind of incident,” he said.

What He Helped Build

Kaushansky has been such a supporter of expanding the facilities and expertise at Stony Brook that he said the campus developed a joke about him.

“What’s the dean’s favorite bird?” he asked. “A crane.”

Fixtures on the campus for years, those cranes — the construction vehicles, not the birds — have changed the university, adding new teaching, research and clinical space on the campus.

That includes the Medical and Research Translational building and Bed Tower, which started in 2013 and opened in 2018, and the Hospital Pavilion, which has an additional 150 beds. Those extra beds were especially important a year after the pavilion opened, providing much-needed space for patients battling against COVID.

Gomes appreciated what Kaushansky built physically, as well as the interactive collaborations among different parts of the university. “An active collaboration and communication between researchers, clinicians and academics is a very different model” from the typical separation among those groups, she said. The work “reaped great rewards on the front end with the ability to collaborate to bring new ideas forward.”

As for the type of care patients received at Stony Brook, Kaushansky recalled a discussion over six years ago about central line infections. The data came from a 12 month period, starting six months prior to the meeting and going back to 18 months earlier.

“How are we going to know why all those central line infections occurred by looking at data” from so much earlier, Kaushansky recalled asking. The hospital created real time dashboards, which is an effort that has “paid huge dividends.”

Kaushansky cited the hospitals’ top 100 health grade for three years running. These grades assess whether patients survive a procedure, have complications or need to be readmitted.

“You’re going to get the best care possible when you come to Stony Brook,” Kaushansky said, as the top 100 rating puts Stony Brook in the top 2 percent of hospitals in the country.

Apart from the buildings Kaushansky helped develop, he’s proud of the program he helped build for medical school students.

About six years ago, Stony Brook instituted a new medical school curriculum that had translational pillars. The school starts students in the clinical realm considerably earlier than the classic program that involves two years of basic studies, followed by two years of clinical work.

Stony Brook provides basic science, followed by earlier exposure to the clinic, with a return to basic science after that

“It’s much more effective if you teach the basic science after the student has witnessed the clinical manifestation,” Kaushansky said. These approaches are part of translational pillars in areas such as cancer, physiology and infectious diseases.

As for what he’ll miss after he leaves, Kaushansky particularly appreciated the opportunity to speak with students. He used to hold a monthly breakfast with four or five students, where he learned about each student, their career goals and their medical journey.

A former colleague at the University of California at San Diego, John Carethers, who is the Chair in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan, visited Kaushansky as a speaker twice at Stony Brook.

Carethers saw “first hand the wonderful impact he had on students — knowing their names, and providing wonderful advice,” he wrote in an email.

The Next Steps

For a decade, Kaushansky said he wanted to create a course about the future of medicine.

“There are a lot of great innovations in medicine that are fascinating from a scientific and clinical perspective,” Kaushansky said.

He will work on a course for use at Stony Brook in the main campus, the medical campus and for whichever program is interested in sharing these innovative medical and scientific steps in medicine.

He also plans to continue to be the lead editor of the primary textbook in hematology, called Williams Hematology. The textbook has gone through 10 editions.

Kaushansky and his wife Lauren, who is an author and education professor at Stony Brook, aren’t likely to remain on Long Island in the longer term. The couple has a getaway home in Santa Fe and may go there.

Kaushansky’s hobbies include wood working and running. He made a sofa when he was an undergraduate at UCLA, while his second significant work was a 16-foot sailboat he made as a second-year resident. He estimates he has made 40 pieces of furniture.

Kaushansky runs four miles a day four to six times a week. In 1990, he ran the Seattle Marathon which was the Goodwill Games Marathon, finishing in a time of around three hours and twenty-five minutes.

Culturally, Kaushansky hopes the school continues to embrace his focus on generosity.

“You’ve got to be generous with your time,” he said. 

“No more can you say that you are too busy to talk. You have to be of a personality that takes pride and that gets the endorphins going from seeing the people you have brought, the people you have entrusted in leadership roles, succeed.”

Photos courtesy of Stony Brook University

Stony Brook University Hospital

Stony Brook University Hospital has once again been named one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals™ for 2021 by Healthgrades – the only hospital on Long Island to receive this distinction for the past three consecutive years. The distinction places Stony Brook University Hospital in the top two percent of nearly 4,500 hospitals assessed nationwide for its consistent, year-over-year superior clinical performance as measured by Healthgrades, the leading resource that connects consumers, physicians and health systems. Only five hospitals in New York State were named among America’s 100 Best Hospitals this year. 

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

“This is the equivalent of receiving another A+ on our annual report card for quality care,” said Kenneth Kaushansky, MD, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, Stony Brook Medicine. “It places us among the top 2 percent of hospitals nationwide. More importantly, it measures results that make a significant difference in the lives of our patients every day.”

Healthgrades analyzes hospitals nationwide to examine in-hospital complication rates and mortality rates. From 2017 through 2019, patients treated in hospitals achieving the award had, on average, a 26.1 percent lower risk of dying than if they were treated in hospitals that did not receive the award, as measured across 19 rated conditions and procedures for which mortality is the outcome.* And during that same period, if all hospitals performed similarly to those achieving the Healthgrades America’s 100 Best Hospitals Award, 172,298 lives could potentially have been saved. 

“These outcomes are the direct result of the high-quality care provided by our staff every day,” said Carol A Gomes, MS, FACHE, CPHQ, Chief Executive Officer for Stony Brook University Hospital. “Their daily commitment to our patients drives these outstanding results, which literally save lives.”

Stony Brook University Hospital has been recognized as One of America’s 100 Best Hospitals for Cardiac Care™ for seven years in a row, One of America’s 100 Best Hospitals for Coronary Intervention and Stroke Care™ for six years in a row.

In fact, Stony Brook is the only hospital in the northeast** region of the U.S., and one of only five hospitals in the nation, to achieve 2021 America’s 100 Best Hospitals Award and America’s 100 Best in Cardiac Care, Coronary Intervention and Stroke Care.

“These types of consistent awards are not achieved by accident,” said Meadow P. Jaime, MA, Director of Quality Solutions for Healthgrades. “This recognition is validation of the ongoing effort and focus that Stony Brook’s dedicated teams have devoted to providing high-quality care and clinical excellence.”

During the 2021 study period (Medicare Fiscal Years 2017-2019), Healthgrades America’s 100 Best Hospitals Award recipients are recognized for overall clinical excellence and providing top quality care across multiple specialty lines and areas. These hospitals showed superior performance in clinical outcomes for patients in the Medicare population across at least 21 of 32 most common inpatient conditions and procedures — as measured by objective performance data (risk-adjusted mortality and in-hospital complications).

“Now more than ever, it is important to celebrate the physicians, nurses and extended care teams that are working around the clock to keep our nation safe. For the select hospitals that have been recognized with a Healthgrades America’s 100 Best Hospitals Award, we extend our heartfelt appreciation and commend them for their ongoing commitment to delivering the highest quality healthcare,” said Brad Bowman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Healthgrades.

To learn more about how Healthgrades determines award recipients, and for more information on Healthgrades Quality Solutions, please visit www.healthgrades.com/quality.

About Stony Brook University Hospital:

Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH) is Long Island’s premier academic medical center. With 624 beds, SBUH serves as the region’s only tertiary care center and Regional Trauma Center, and is home to the Stony Brook University Heart Institute, Stony Brook University Cancer Center, Stony Brook Children’s Hospital and Stony Brook University Neurosciences Institute. SBUH also encompasses Suffolk County’s only Level 4 Regional Perinatal Center, state-designated AIDS Center, state-designated Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, state-designated Burn Center, the Christopher Pendergast ALS Center of Excellence, and Kidney Transplant Center. It is home of the nation’s first Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis Center. To learn more, visit www.stonybrookmedicine.edu/sbuh.

*Statistics are based on Healthgrades analysis of MedPAR data for years 2017 through 2019 and represent 3-year estimates for Medicare patients only.

**Northeast region is defined by the Census Bureau as Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, New York & Pennsylvania.

Chris Pendergast at an ALS Ride for Life event

When Christopher K. Pendergast was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig’s Disease, he was told he had three years to live. He lived 28 years instead. And what a 28 years they were.

Chris Pendergast

Chris, who died on Oct. 14 at age 71, went on to found the ALS Ride for Life in 1997, raising over $10 million for ALS research. The Center for ALS at Stony Brook Medicine now bears his name. And along the way, he met with everyone from U.S. Presidents to legislators to the manager of the New York Yankees. It was all part of his unending quest to help others.

“I want to make a difference,” said the elementary schoolteacher from Miller Place. “I want the extra few years I have to count for something.”

Did he ever.

Chris knew what he was up against. He disdained the term “survivor,” because he knew he would not survive. Instead, he preferred saying that he had lived with ALS for “X” number of years.

On the day he died, his family issued a media statement, saying, “Our dad, despite all odds, lived life just how he wanted until his last morning. He fought ALS bravely for 28 years and dedicated 23 of those years raising awareness and funds for ALS. He touched so many lives but at the end of the day, he was just ‘our dad’ who happened to do remarkable things.”

It wasn’t just by happenstance.

Over the course of 28 years, Chris advocated for patients with ALS, driven to raise funds for ALS research, awareness and patient care through the Ride for Life. He met with other patients with ALS privately and offered them his insights and his friendship for the difficult journey that he knew lay ahead.

Although a quadriplegic, on a ventilator, and using an eye-gaze computer to communicate, Chris remained active with the Ride in his final days.

“Chris taught us much about the range of possibilities of individuals with ALS, about humanity, and the art of what is possible,” said Kenneth Kaushansky, MD, Senior Vice President, Health Sciences, and Dean, Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. “His legacy as a trailblazing ALS advocate through the Ride for Life organization and his work at Stony Brook will last for generations to come.”

Based on his work, Chris received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ALS Association. The ALS Center at Stony Brook Medicine was renamed the Stony Brook Neuromuscular Disease and Christopher Pendergast ALS Center of Excellence in his honor.

“We are proud to have known Chris as a friend, colleague and warrior against ALS,” Dr. Kaushansky said. “We will continue to work to find a cure for ALS, in honor of his life and vision.”

— STONY BROOK MEDICINE

Stock photo

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, the dean of the Stony Brook Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, is eager to restart the educational mission of training medical school students.

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, the dean of the medical school at SBU, said there’s a real possibility of a second wave of COVID-19. File photo

While Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has said that medical schools can restart on June 22, Kaushansky has asked for a waiver to allow students to continue to build on their clinical knowledge sooner.

“I was worried about the delay in doing the experiential learning,” Kaushansky said. A delay that lasts too long could push graduation back for the rising fourth year students, which is “not good for any health care professional. We need health care professionals, including respiratory therapists, physical therapists, nurses and social workers” among others.

On top of the need to ensure on-time graduation for the Class of 2021, he said another wave of the COVID-19 crisis will increase the demand for graduates.

The medical school dean said Stony Brook University Hospital is watching carefully the protests over the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer charged with his murder. The hospital and staff are ready in the event of a spike in demand for health care after large gatherings on Long Island and in New York City.

“We are ready to mobilize on a moment’s notice because we did it the first” time, albeit with numerous questions about the course and potential treatment for the new virus, Kaushansky said.

On Saturday, he sent out a letter to the health sciences community addressing what he termed “health care racism.”

“We witnessed the sum of all these effects in the disproportionate lethal burden of COVID-19 on communities of color, a combination of overcrowding at home, of jobs that do not allow the protection afforded by work from home, or from the disproportionate burden of health care conditions that arise, in part, from health care disparities,” he wrote in the letter. He urged the Stony Brook community to “do everything in our power to work toward erasing the social determinants of disease that contribute to our unequal society.”

He urged learners and critical staff to develop and practice cultural sensitivities, and he also suggested that the school should make “certain our graduates reflect the diverse society in which we live.”

In its admission decisions, SBU includes the notion of overcoming hardship as a part of the process through which the school evaluates prospective students.

In the coming years, Kaushansky plans to emphasize further the importance of encouraging those who have faced significant hurdles in applying to the medical school.

In terms of treating patients who have COVID-19, he is encouraged by the use of remdesivir and convalescent plasma. The school has these treatments available for people who are sick and is studying the effectiveness of these approaches.

More than 1,500 patients have been admitted through the university hospital, Southampton and Eastern Long Island hospitals and have benefited from the clinical study of symptoms including clots.

Surgeons had noticed that D-dimer levels, which are proteins that indicate the presence of clots, were shooting up. They decided when this protein reached a certain level, they would use a full dose of anticoagulants.

Stony Brook has put the results of these aggressive anticoagulant treatments into an article that has been submitted for publication.

In the meantime, the university has taken an across-the-board approach to raising anticoagulants.

“That will improve the mortality rate should we get a second wave,” Kaushansky predicted.

In the event of a second wave, Stony Brook Hospital and, indeed, New York will be better prepared, with more tests, greater awareness and contact tracing.

Kaushansky believes that the people who have already fought off the virus are presumably immune from getting it a second time. What’s unclear, he explained, is whether the antibody test is predictive of resistance. Additionally, it’s unclear how long that resistance will last.

He expects that monoclonal antibodies can work, but that they should be reserved for the sickest patients. They are expensive and are hard to produce the level necessary for the U.S. population of more than 300 million people.

What worries the Stony Brook dean is that people have had enough of staying at home, social distancing and wearing masks. In the worst of the crisis, when the numbers of people sick and dying were climbing, Kaushansky could get to work in much less time than normal, as traffic on the roads had lightened up considerably.

Days before the Phase 2 reopening, which began on Wednesday of this week, the level of traffic has returned to a more normal density.

Meanwhile, Phase 2 for Stony Brook University involves reopening research laboratories and allowing people who were previously deemed nonessential workers to return to the labs in an “orderly and safe fashion,” Kaushansky said.

The university has installed plexiglass shields, requires social distancing, built partitions between people who don’t have their own offices, and requires everyone to wear masks and have their temperatures taken when they come to work.

The hospital opened up for elective surgery two weeks ago. Everyone who is scheduled for surgery has to get a viral swab the day before.

The approach the university has taken in requiring personal protective equipment and social distancing has paid off for hospital staff who have been exposed to all those sick patients. The rate of antibody tests of employees is much lower than in the general community.

“It’s safer to be a frontline health worker at Stony Brook than to work at some grocery stories,” Kaushansky said.

On the clinical side, he believes Stony Brook Hospital needs more highly skilled nurses. At the peak, the university hospital had 437 patients. If it had reached 500, “we would have been in trouble,” he added.

Upstate New York had sent 20 experienced nurses to help out.

“Nursing is important and high-level nursing, operating-room nursing, was particularly stressed,” Kaushansky said. “We need to hire more nurses.”

He added that the school trains excellent nurses and plans to hire some of its own graduates.

In terms of medical school classes, the dean said the university hasn’t decided yet whether to bring small groups back together. The big lecture halls will still involve remote teaching.

“Are the smaller group educational exercises going to be back safely?” he asked. “I’m working to make that happen.”

Kaushansky takes solace in the way PPE reduced the infection rate for the hospital as a whole, and believes such an approach could work for medical school classes as well.

By Daniel Dunaief

Screws can’t be the best and only answer. That was the conclusion neurosurgeon Daniel Birk at the Stony Brook Neurosciences Institute came to when he was reconsidering the state-of-the-art treatment for spinal injuries. The screws, which hold the spine in place, create problems for patients in part because they aren’t as flexible as bone.

That’s where Stony Brook University’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, headed by Fotis Sotiropoulos, plans to pitch in. Working with Kenneth Kaushansky, dean of Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine, the two Stony Brook leaders have been immersed in uniting their two disciplines to find ways engineers can improve medical care.

Fotis Sotiropoulos

The two departments have created the Institute for Engineering-Driven Medicine, which will address a wide range of medical challenges that might have engineering solutions. The institute will focus on developing organs for transplantation, neurobiological challenges and cancer diagnostics.

The institute, which already taps into the medical and engineering expertise of both departments, will move into a new $75 million building at the Research and Development Park, in 2023.

The original investment from New York State’s Economic Development Council was for an advanced computing center. The state, however, had given Buffalo the same funds for a similar facility, which meant that former Stony Brook President Sam Stanley, who recently became the president of Michigan State University, needed to develop another plan.

Sotiropoulos and Kaushansky had already created a white paper that coupled engineering and medicine. They developed a proposal that the state agreed to fund. In return for their investment, the state is looking for the development of economic activity, with spin-off companies, jobs, new industries and new ideas, Kaushansky said.

The two leaders are developing “a number of new faculty recruits to flesh out the programs that are going in the building,” Kaushansky added.

Sotiropoulos, who has conducted research in the past on blood flow dynamics in prosthetic heart valves, believes in the potential of this collaboration. “This convergence of engineering and medicine is already doing what it was intended to do,” he said. Clinicians can get “crazy sci-fi ideas, talk to engineers and figure out a way to make it happen.”

In addition to spinal cord support, researchers in engineering and medicine are working on developing algorithms to make decisions about surgical interventions, such as cesarean sections. 

A recent project from principal investigator Professor Petar Djurić, chair of SBU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Gerald Quirk, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Stony Brook Medicine, recently received $3.2 million from the National Institutes of Health. The goal of the project is to use computer science to assist with the decisions doctors face during childbirth. A potential reduction in C sections could lower medical costs. 

“This is a fantastic example of this type of convergence of engineering and medicine,” said Sotiropoulos.”

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky. Photo from SBU

While the building will host scientists across a broad spectrum of backgrounds, researchers at Stony Brook will be able to remain in their current labs and coordinate with this initiative. Combining all these skills will allow researchers to apply for more grants and, Stony Brook hopes, secure greater funding.

“For a number of years now, the [National Institutes of Health have] really favored interdisciplinary approaches to important medical problems,” Kaushansky said. “Science is becoming a team sport. The broader range of skills on your team, the more likely you’ll be successful. That’s the underlying premise behind this.”

The notion of combining medicine and engineering, while growing as an initiative at Stony Brook, isn’t unique; more than a dozen institutions in the country have similar such collaborations in place.

“We’re relatively early in the game of taking this much more holistic approach,” said Kaushansky, who saw one of the earlier efforts of this convergence when he was at the University of California at San Diego, where he worked with the Founding Chair of the Department of Bioengineering Shu Chien. 

The Stony Brook institute has created partnerships with other organizations, including Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center.

“The more clinical people we engage, the better it is for the institute,” Sotiropoulos said.

As for the bionic spine, Kaushansky has familial experience with spinal injuries. His mother suffered through several spinal surgeries. “There’s a need for much, much better mechanical weight-bearing device that will help people with back problems,” he said.

At this point, Stony Brook has gone two-thirds of the way through the National Science Foundation process to receive a $10 million grant for this spinal cord research. Sotiropoulos suggested that a bionic spine could be “a game changer.”

While the institute will seek ways to create viable medical devices, diagnostics and even organs, it will also meet the educational mandate of the school, helping to train the next generation of undergraduate and graduate students. The school already has a program called Vertically Integrated Projects, or VIPs, in place, which offers students experiential learning over the course of three or four years. The effort combines undergraduates with graduates and faculty members to work on innovative efforts.

“These projects are interdisciplinary and are all technology focused,” Sotiropoulos said. “We bring together students” from areas like engineering, computer science and medicine, which “go after big questions,” and that the VIP efforts are structured to unite engineers and doctors-in-training through the educational process.

Through the institute, Stony Brook also plans to collaborate with other Long Island research teams at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory, Sotiropoulos said, adding that the scientists are “not just interested in doing blue sky research. We are interested in developing services, algorithms, practices, whatever it is, that can improve patient care and costs.”

Indeed, given the translational element to the work, the institute is encouraging a connection with economic development efforts at Stony Brook, which will enable faculty to create spin-off companies and protect their ideas. The institute’s leadership would like to encourage the faculty to “create companies to market and take to market new products and developments,” said Sotiropoulos.

Photos from SBU

An aerial view of Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital. Photo from Stony Brook Medicine

On July 1, Stony Brook Medicine announced the newest member of the Stony Brook University Hospital health care system — Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport.

The 90-bed, acute care hospital has been affiliated with Stony Brook since 2006, and in 2015, talks began between the two hospitals to form a partnership. The Greenport campus will now be referred to as Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital.

“This really has been a win-win for both the hospital and for the people on the South Fork so let’s do it on the North Fork.”

— Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, senior vice president of health sciences and dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, said the partnership will allow SBELIH to work collaboratively with Stony Brook University Hospital and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, which joined the health care system in 2017.

While Stony Brook Medicine takes on the responsibility of operating the campus when it comes to things such as finances and quality responsibility, Kaushansky said the health care system doesn’t own the other hospitals but leases the buildings from the owners, and staff members are not state employees and continue with the same salaries and unions as before.

He said the partnership with Southampton has been a successful one, and the same is expected with SBELIH.

“This really has been a win-win for both the hospital and for the people on the South Fork so let’s do it on the North Fork,” Kaushansky said.

Stony Brook expects to help grow the Greenport hospital’s staff. Residents of the North Fork, which SBELIH serves along with Shelter Island, now can receive additional resources, particularly specialized outpatient services. Kaushansky said another plus is the use of a telehealth program, which allows doctors and patients on the North Fork direct access to Stony Brook Medicine specialists.

Stony Brook also has its eyes on Long Island Community Hospital in East Patchogue, which Kaushansky said they are in talks with, to see if it makes sense to create a similar affiliation with the facility.

“We would anticipate that behavioral medicine will remain the core service at Eastern Long Island Hospital.”

— Dr. Margaret McGovern

“[It would be] another opportunity for us to grow our health care system, which will give us more bandwidth, give us more opportunity to keep patients as close to home as possible,” he said. “But when it comes time to need more advanced facilities, they have a seamless transition into Stony Brook Hospital.”

Dr. Margaret McGovern, vice president for health system clinical programs and strategy at Stony Brook Medicine, said the affiliation is another step on the path of the health care system expanding.

She and Kaushansky said the behavioral health programs of Eastern Long Island, which include medical-surgical services, critical care, psychiatry and drug and alcohol detoxification and rehabilitation services, are strong.

“We would anticipate that behavioral medicine will remain the core service at Eastern Long Island Hospital,” McGovern said.

Kaushansky added that with limited beds at the university hospital for behavioral health patients, it will be a benefit to be able to utilize SBELIH.

Paul Connor, chief administrative officer of SBELIH, said a psychiatric residency started at the Greenport campus July 1 as a part of Stony Brook Medicine’s academic mission. The CAO said training physicians and health care professionals is important for future staffing needs, as a high percentage of physicians are more apt to remain where they spent their residency.

“This was really an effort to preserve the mission of Eastern Long Island Hospital and ultimately to create more local health care options.”

— Paul Connor

Connor said the hospital opened in 1905 and was the first hospital in Suffolk County and the second one on Long Island.

“This was really an effort to preserve the mission of Eastern Long Island Hospital and ultimately to create more local health care options,” he said.

The hospital’s board will be part of a joint advisory committee with Stony Brook Medicine, he said, and will meet on a regular basis to discuss topics such as finances, planning and safety.

“They’re going to be in a position to influence the operation of the hospital as representatives from the community,” he said.

Connor said the ELIH Foundation will continue to exist and be independent of Stony Brook, which means any funds raised will go toward the SBELIH campus.

McGovern said while Stony Brook is a resource for other hospitals entering the system, providing services such as a burn unit,  psychiatric emergency department and kidney transplant program, many patients prefer to be treated close to home.

“A lot of care is appropriate in a community hospital setting, so that’s the model we’re going with and complementing it with a robust outpatient ambulatory platform,” she said.

In addition to its strong behavioral health programs, SBELIH is also one of two hospitals on Long Island providing skin cancer screenings to all inpatients through its Mollie Biggane Melanoma Foundation.

File photo
Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

When choosing a hospital, whether for yourself or a loved one, it pays to have the peace of mind in knowing that you or your loved one will receive the highest quality of care. One way to help ensure that peace of mind is to do your homework.

We recently received news that will give the residents of Suffolk County and beyond one more reason to feel confident about choosing Stony Brook University Hospital for their health care needs. Our hospital has been named one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals™ for 2019 by Healthgrades, the first organization in the country to rate hospitals entirely on the basis of the quality of clinical outcomes.

Recipients of the America’s 100 Best Hospitals Award are recognized for overall clinical excellence based on quality outcomes for 34 conditions and procedures for 4,500 hospitals nationwide. Healthgrades reviews three years of Medicare and other inpatient data, comparing actual to predicted performance for specific and common patient conditions. 

This impressive distinction was achieved by the entire Stony Brook University Hospital team working together to achieve one goal — to deliver on a commitment to provide every patient with exceptional care. We continuously put patient safety and quality of care first, while bringing cutting-edge services and evidence-based medicine to our community. 

As one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals, Stony Brook University Hospital is in the top 2 percent of hospitals nationwide and one of only four hospitals in New York State exhibiting exemplary clinical excellence over the most recent three-year evaluation.

Stony Brook was also named one of America’s 100 Best Hospitals for cardiac care, coronary intervention and stroke care. I’m proud to report that our hospital is the only one in the entire U.S. Northeast region, and one of only two hospitals in the nation, to achieve America’s 100 Best Hospitals in all four of these categories.

With so many choices, it helps to understand that the quality of care you receive varies from hospital to hospital. Whether you are planning an elective surgery or you are admitted to our hospital unexpectedly, it’s important to know that at Stony Brook University Hospital, you’ll be at one of the nation’s best.

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky is senior vice president, Health Sciences, and dean, Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

File photo
New name honors long-standing support from Renaissance Technologies families

By Kenneth Kaushansky, M.D.

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

There’s an old adage that things get better with age: The relationship between Stony Brook University and the families of Renaissance Technologies is certainly proof of that, having maintained a close connection for more than 35 years.

Throughout the years, 111 families at Renaissance Technologies have donated more than $500 million to the university. Now in recognition of their contributions and generosity, Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., Stony Brook University president, recently announced that Stony Brook University School of Medicine will now be known as the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. This new name was recently voted on and approved by the board of trustees of the State University of New York. 

The relationship began in 1982 when Jim Simons, the former chair of the Department of Mathematics at Stony Brook University, made a $750 unrestricted gift to the university’s annual fund, becoming the first at Renaissance Technologies to contribute to the Long Island institution. 

Since that time, current and former employees of Renaissance Technologies and their families have donated more than $500 million to date in support of Stony Brook’s students, faculty and primarily research in life sciences and medicine. This significant investment has improved the quality of medical education at Stony Brook, creating 34 endowed faculty chairs and professorships, nine innovative academic and research centers and $35 million for student scholarships and fellowships.

Gifts have supported areas where the personal interests of the Renaissance families intersect with the strategic investment needs of the university, such as Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, basic science research, imaging, health care for those who are underserved, cancer research, medicine and the Staller Center for the Arts.

This incredible engagement by Renaissance employees and their 111 donor families — very few of whom attended our university — has created a true “renaissance” at Stony Brook. 

As dean of the School of Medicine, I’m so proud that our school will carry their name in recognition of the excellence they’ve helped create at Stony Brook. During the Campaign for Stony Brook alone, more than 72 Renaissance Technologies employees and their families donated $166.5 million that directly benefited Stony Brook Medicine and the School of Medicine and a total of over $400 million to the university as a whole. 

The Renaissance School of Medicine is the top-ranked public medical school in New York State and ranks 57th in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report. 

A member of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and a Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)-accredited medical school, the Renaissance School of Medicine was established in 1971. With 25 academic departments, it trains over 500 medical students and more than 750 medical residents and fellows annually.

The investments in medicine and throughout Stony Brook by Renaissance families have transformed the university and the communities it serves by deploying the most inventive new solutions to the most important issues of our time. 

And as the years go on, things will only get better as their contributions ensure continued access to groundbreaking medical treatments and leading-edge, innovative medical care for the residents of Suffolk County and beyond.

Kenneth Kaushansky, M.D., is the senior vice president of Health Sciences and dean of Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Stony Brook University representatives and legislators joined Jim and Marilyn Simons, holding scissors, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at SBU Nov. 1. Photo from Stony Brook University

Stony Brook University is stepping into the future when it comes to cancer research and patient care.

“Imagine what we will accomplish once this building is filled with the pre-eminent doctors and scientists from across campus, the state and the globe.”

— Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Nov. 1 to commemorate the completion of construction of the Medical and Research Translation building, where Stony Brook University Cancer Center will be the primary occupant. The eight-level, 240,000-square-foot facility features expanded state-of-the-art space that will be used by clinicians and researchers to discover new cancer treatments, educate students, create more space for patients and family, and more. The building is slated to be opened to patients in January.

At a presentation after the ceremony, SBU President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. said the MART is the result of public and private funds and donations. Support from Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), the State University of New York and Empire State Development led to a $35 million NYSUNY 2020 challenge grant. Also, $50 million from a $150 million gift from Jim Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies, and his wife Marilyn, and $53 million in funds secured by state Sens. John Flanagan (R-East Northport) and Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) added to donations from supporters.

The university president said the MART will bring together national and international experts in various fields including applied mathematics, imaging, chemistry, biology and computer science.

“Imagine what we will accomplish once this building is filled with the preeminent doctors and scientists from across campus, the state and the globe,” Stanley said.

Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, senior vice president of health sciences and dean of the school of medicine, said the idea of the facility was conceived eight days after his arrival at Stony Brook nine years ago. He said it was envisioned as a catalyst for highly advanced cancer research and a facility to provide outstanding clinical care to patients.

“Because cancer researchers, educators and clinicians would occupy the same building and wait in the same lines for coffee, juice and food, what I’d like to term productive collisions would be inevitable, allowing the MART to serve as an incubator with the very best people to produce and then practice the very best ideas in medicine,” he said.

“With expanded space for patients and families, the MART offers a convenient access to Stony Brook Cancer’s experts, all of them in one location, whether you’re four years old or 84 years old.”

— Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky

Kaushansky said the building is more than medical professionals coming together and brainstorming.

“With expanded space for patients and families, the MART offers a convenient access to Stony Brook Cancer’s experts, all of them in one location, whether you’re 4 years old or 84 years old,” Kaushansky said.

The dean said since 2012 Dr. Yusuf Hannun, director of SBU Cancer Center, has assembled a dream team of researchers, physicians, staff members and educators dedicated to finding cures and compassionate care for SBU patients.

Hannun said the plan was to build a comprehensive cancer center on Long Island that conducts cutting-edge research to understand cancer and then design approaches to predict, diagnose, prevent and defeat cancer.

“The broad scope of activities that we conduct — research, education, clinical trials, prevention, patient care, survivorship and many others — is only possible in a setting of an academic medical center that can support this depth and breadth of activity,” he said.

SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson, who battled Hodgkin’s disease nearly 40 years ago, attended the event. As a cancer survivor, Johnson said she was happy to be at the ribbon cutting and wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for professionals that developed the treatment she had to undergo.

“I can’t wait to see what innovations are going to come out for the care and treatment of patients to come from the comprehensive team of cross-disciplinary researchers empowered by MART, and how this facility will change the way we educate physician-scientists here at Stony Brook University,” Johnson said.

Stony Brook University President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. recently announced the success of The Campaign for Stony Brook fundraising efforts which raised more than $600 million for the school. File photo by Greg Catalano

Stony Brook University continues to make history.

After graduating the largest class in May since SBU opened, the university announced Aug. 21 it concluded the most successful fundraising effort in the State University of New York’s history.

The breakdown of donations to The Campaign for Stony Brook and what areas the funds will go to. Graphic from Stony Brook University

In the past seven years, The Campaign for Stony Brook raised $630.7 million, according to a press release from SBU. A total of 47,961 friends, alumni, foundations and corporations donated to help the university achieve its campaign goal of $600 million.

“Philanthropy, and the generosity of our donors, provides the margin of excellence for an R1, [Association of American Universities] public research university like Stony Brook, during a time when state support is waning, and more and more students are seeking access to excellence,” said university President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. in a statement. “The Campaign for Stony Brook dramatically underscores the importance and impact of philanthropy across our campus and I am extremely grateful to my fellow campaign leaders, and to those who contributed the extra resources we need to continue to educate and prepare the leaders of tomorrow.”

The money raised from the campaign has enabled the university to add 44 endowed chairs and professorships in various departments. Before the campaign, SBU only had 11 endowed faculty positions on campus, according to the press release. In addition to the endowed positions, new investments have been made in areas such as the Southampton graduate programs in creative writing and film, undergraduate research, the Alda Center for Communicating Science, the Gelfond Fund for Mercury Research, and the Dubin Family Athletic Performance Center.

The university will use $52.6 million of the funds raised for student financial aid, with $40.3 million for current use and $12.3 million for endowed undergraduate scholarships and graduate student fellowships. According to the press release, the contributions will also benefit the Medical and Research Translation and Stony Brook Children’s Hospital buildings scheduled to open this fall, the university pool will be refurbished, and plans are underway to modernize the North and Central Reading Rooms in the Melville Library and to expand the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics. To create and support academic centers, $209.1 million has been set aside. Among the centers that will benefit are the Bahl Center for Metabolomics and Imaging, the Institute for Advanced Computational Science, the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, the Mattoo Center for India Studies, the Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program, the Lourie Center for Pediatric MS and the Thomas Hartman Center for Parkinson’s Research.

“The Campaign for Stony Brook dramatically underscores the importance and impact of philanthropy across our campus.”

— Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr.

The campaign began in the fall of 2011 with a lead gift of $150 million from the Simons Foundation and former Math Department Chair Jim Simons and his wife Marilyn. After the Simons’ donation, employees of Renaissance Technologies in Setauket, a hedge fund firm Jim Simons founded, donated more than $127.4 million.

Richard Gelfond, chair of the Stony Brook Foundation board and CEO of IMAX Corporation, said in a statement that the Simons’ donation “created a groundswell of support.”

“Their confidence in Stony Brook and the investments they inspired have given the University the financial capacity to compete for the best researchers, clinicians, teachers and students and to aim for excellence in every way,” Gelfond said.

Funds raised have already helped to catalyze several innovative and impactful research and clinical programs, according to Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, Stony Brook University School of Medicine dean and senior vice president for Health Sciences.

“Campaign funding has also greatly enhanced our strength in imaging technology to diagnose and treat disease, in leveraging big data to help detect patterns of disease and response to treatment, and in new procedures to reduce the risk of stroke, colon cancer and heart disease,” Kaushansky said.

For more information on The Campaign for Stony Brook results, visit www.stonybrook.edu/campaign.