VNSNY Heroes of 2020
“We Are All Heroes!” Don’t Miss this Hometown Heroes Parade Video!
July 13, 2021–On July 7th, VNSNY staff representing all parts of the organization marched through the Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan, in a historic parade celebrating the contributions of all essential workers throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Health care employees, transportation workers, food service professionals, and other groups gathered together to participate in what is now being called one of the largest ticker tape parades in the city’s history. Starting at Battery Park, VNSNY made their way up Broadway to City Hall, meeting with press, government officials, and countless grateful New Yorkers along the way. See for yourself! Click below to watch the moving video, and thanks to everyone who marched for representing VNSNY! The following are the VNSNY Heroes who participated in the parade: Partners in Care: Denise Mallette, Home Health Aide, Yeasmin Mehli, Home Health Aide, Elvira Ruiz, Home Health Aide, Veronica Ventura, Home Health Aide— CHHA: Eileen Baez, Registered
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Meet Lauren Weir, Diana Vargas and the Other Amazing Staff Who Procure, Assemble and Deliver PPE
June 11, 2020–What do you do when the VNSNY Annual Golf Classic—one of your two biggest fundraising events of the year—is postponed because of COVID-19? Answer: You transform yourself into a procurement wizard, using your expert event-planning skills and vendor relationships to secure the essential personal protective equipment (PPE) and other supplies needed to keep VNSNY’s staff, patients and members safe during the pandemic. In fact, that’s exactly what Lauren Weir, VNSNY’s Special Events & Individual Giving Manager, did this spring. In mid-March, as COVID-19 hit the New York metropolitan area at the same time PPE shortages were being felt nationwide, VNSNY began working to develop its own pipeline of PPE. That’s when Lauren, who has been with the VNSNY Development team for 13 years, switched from helping to tee up a fundraising hole-in-one with the VNSNY Golf Classic, and joined forces with Sal Bastardi, VP of Corporate Administrative Services, Michael Bernstein, EVP and
The Brooklyn South Hospice Team: Extraordinary Clinicians Working Tirelessly for Their Patients
June 10, 2020–Diane Blair, Supervisor for VNSNY’s Brooklyn South Hospice team, recalls a phone call that came into the office: “Do you have someone there named Vitaliy, a nurse, very tall?” When the answer was yes, the voice on the phone shouted to waiting family members, “This is the place, this is where we want Grandpa to go!” The tall nurse, Coordinator of Care (COC) Vitaliy Generalov, makes a big impact on communities in and around Coney Island, bringing compassion and expertise to patients and families facing end of life. “I love hospice care,” says Vitaliy, a Belarusian immigrant who communicates in their own language with the sizeable Russian-speaking community in his area of Brooklyn, as well as working with families from many other cultures. “It’s really doing two jobs at one time—delivering the clinical care and also educating families every step of the way, talking to them about life, death, family,
VNSNY Home Care Nurse Cidric Trinidad Plays “Imagine” for Our Health Care Heroes and a More Just World
June 8, 2020–In this musical video message from one of our COVID-19 frontline heroes, VNSNY Home Care nurse Cidric Trinidad shares his inspiring piano performance of John Lennon’s “Imagine” in support of America’s health care workers and peaceful protests for social justice.
CMHS’s WeCARE Staff—Providing Support and Hope for the Most Vulnerable New Yorkers
June 4, 2020–For extremely vulnerable New Yorkers struggling with mental and physical health challenges, trust is often the first barrier to getting needed care. Case managers with the WeCARE Wellness program run by VNSNY’s Community Mental Health Services (CMHS) work hard to build and maintain that trust with their clients—a skill that’s especially important now, with all the uncertainty and upheaval from the coronavirus pandemic. When a young mother living in a homeless shelter experienced COVID-like symptoms, for example, her first reaction was to keep the symptoms to herself out of fear that she’d be asked to leave the shelter. But she had enough trust to confide in Angela Corre, her WeCARE Wellness Case Manager. Angela immediately connected the young woman with a primary care physician. It turned out that the client didn’t have the virus but was just experiencing a flare-up of her allergies. She was prescribed new medications and her
VNSNY Heroes of 2020: Physicians Database Coordinators: Keeping the Care Moving
June 2, 2020–“I have come to heal the brokenhearted/And to give your heart a song.” So goes the gospel song, “More Abundantly,” that Maude Tolbert is listening to at her home office these days in her work as a VNSNY Physicians Database Coordinator. The tight-knit Physicians Database team is responsible for credentialing physicians, tracking down their contact and enrollment information to make sure that patient treatment continues uninterrupted and that VNSNY receives proper compensation for the care it delivers. This includes checking physicians’ current standing with PECOS (Provider Enrollment and Chain/Ownership System) and OPRA (providers who Order, Prescribe, Refer or Attend Medicaid patients). All this helps VNSNY provide seamless patient care and reimbursement for services in the constantly changing environment of the COVID-19 emergency. “When we do our job efficiently, there should be no lapses in patient service,” says Maude, who has been with the team for 15 years. “The doctor’s made the
Gratitude: It’s in the Bag!
May 29, 2020–Sometime in mid-May, Job Becerra, a VNSNY physical therapist coordinator who covers Manhattan’s West Side, started discovering handwritten notes of thanks in his PPE kits. “It was a complete surprise,” he says. “I’ve always felt appreciated at VNSNY, but this response really brings it to a truly personal level.” The initiative is being spearheaded by Peggy O’Neill-Taber, Director, Customer Care Center, and Linda Smith, Associate Director of Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Management. They got the idea to do the thank you cards when Alexis Nelis, the daughter of Donna Nelis, Vice President of Hospice Operations, was in one day to volunteer and began slipping appreciative Post-it notes into the PPE bags. Peggy saw the Post-it notes and thought, what a great idea! While Peggy and Linda initially wanted to keep the program under wraps (“We wanted it to be about the providers, who are the true rock stars—not ourselves,” says Linda),
One Social Worker’s Extraordinary Journey to Help Families in Need
May 28, 2020–As a little girl growing up in Brooklyn, Debra Thomas used to bring an extra sandwich to kindergarten in case a classmate didn’t have enough for lunch. Now, she is helping kids in need on a much larger scale as Program Manager for three key VNSNY Community Mental Health Services (CMHS) programs for children and families. “I love my work,” says Debra. “The people we serve are too often forgotten. If they do get services, they’re used to people telling them, ‘You have to do this, you have to do that.’ We come in and say, ‘What do you need?’ The families are so grateful for that.” The CMHS programs she manages—two short-term rapid intervention initiatives, the Children’s Mobile Crisis Team and the Home-Based Crisis Intervention program, and the school-based Promise Zone preventive program—always look for opportunities to cross-refer to each other. This collaboration has become even more seamless with
A Special Package from VNSNY Hospice Sends a Message of Caring to U.S. Veterans for Memorial Day
May 27, 2020–Observed on the last Monday in May, Memorial Day commemorates the men and women who died while serving our country. May is also National Military Appreciation Month, a time set aside by Congress to honor the important role the U.S. Armed Forces have played in the history of our country. “One way to honor the memory of fallen heroes who have served our country is to support those veterans and military families walking among us today, and help them live well and be all that they can be, each and every day,” notes Joe Vitti, Supervisor of the VNSNY Hospice Veterans Program. A U.S. Army veteran himself, Joe and his colleagues, VNSNY Hospice Veterans Liaisons Erica Wigley and Sung Yoon, know firsthand how challenging this Memorial Day is for many of the servicemen and servicewomen they engage with in their community outreach activities. With social distancing mandates in place, many veterans find themselves more isolated than usual—a difficult situation, especially for those veterans who
During the Pandemic, Partners in Care Home Health Aides Continue Providing Vital Care to Their Clients
May 26, 2020–Each morning, 101-year-old Evelyn* received a radiant greeting: “Hello gorgeous, hello beautiful.” That’s because Shaunae Phaire, her Partners in Care Home Health Aide, was there to rouse her client from bed and help her face the day. “Once your feet hit the floor, you sit up and think, ‘thank God, I got up this morning and I can move,’” Shaunae says. When she first started caring for Evelyn last November, she notes, her client was in bed all day. But with Shaunae’s help, Evelyn soon found her days full of light and life. Even after the COVID-19 coronavirus came to the nursing home where Evelyn lived, Shaunae continued to visit her daily, suiting up in an N95 respirator and gown and putting on so much Purell that “you never realize you’re putting it on anymore.” And though Evelyn was now isolated in her room, Shaunae still made sure her client