Editors' Note

Lisa Goldstein joined Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in March 1997. Before this, she served as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Wayne General Hospital in Wayne, New Jersey, from 1986 to 1996. Goldstein is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University in 1977 and her Master of Professional Studies Degree in Health Services Administration from the Business School at Cornell University in 1979.

How does HSS maintain its position as a leader in patient care?

From the moment patients enters our hospital we want them to feel like they’re being cared for by a high-tech and high-touch organization. Although we’re a large teaching hospital, we have a community feeling.

You mentioned your efforts to create a patient experience that features both the high-tech and high-touch elements of your service. How do you make sure technology doesn’t deter from the personal attention your patients are looking for?

Machines are only as good as the individuals who manage or run them. We still have a high staff-to-patient ratio.

Many of our systems are computerized, and we have mobile carts that can be rolled into patient rooms so that the information relating to patients can be electronically entered directly into the system by the nurse, the dietician, the rehab specialist, or other health care professional.

So although everything is being checked into the computer, it is still the doctor, nurse, or therapist who is taking care of that patient.

We look at technology as an adjunct to people; it’s not taking the place of the care we give – it’s helping us offer the very best of what’s available for an orthopedic patient.

What developments are taking place with your physical plant?

We have grown dramatically over the past 10 years, and to keep up with that is very difficult from a physical point of view.

We’re currently undergoing a big expansion. In 2006, we opened an expanded ambulatory surgery center and now we’re looking to expand the inpatient facilities.

We also have three new floors being built. By next summer, we’ll be at 188 patient beds.

We will have another two inpatient operating rooms open shortly, and we’ll have two more opening in 2012.

We’re going to the state for permission to add additional beds over 188, because we know that we will need them and we will have the space.

We’re also in the midst of putting together a hospital within a hospital, specializing in pediatrics.

So I can’t imagine a time here where you would ask me a question about space and I’d say we have enough. •