Dr. Bergasa Named Winner of the 2017 Heritage Innovation in Healthcare Delivery Award
Jun 07, 2017
PAGNY’s Dr. Nora V. Bergasa, Chief of the Department of Medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan, has been named the winner of the 2017 Heritage Innovation in Healthcare Delivery Award.
The award recognizes an innovator in the development of new modes of diagnosis, treatment and care who actively improves the delivery of services and improves the quality of health care in the New York metropolitan area.
Dr. Norma V. Bergasa, Chief of Medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan (fifth from right), receives the 2017 Heritage Innovation in Healthcare Delivery Award, with (from left) Mark Wagar, President, Heritage Medical Systems; Dr. Carl Nathan, Chairman, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Weill Cornell Medical College; Karen Ignagni, President and CEO, EmblemHealth; Dr. Richard Merkin, President and CEO, Heritage Provider Network; Dr. Steven M. Safyer, President and CEO, Montefiore Medicine; Jill Kaplan, Vice President & Publisher, Crain’s New York Business; and Gil Addo, CEO and Co-founder, RubiconMD
The award is presented by the Heritage Provider Network, the nation’s leading physician-led managed care organization, and Crain’s New York Business. Finalists were selected from all five boroughs of New York City, as well as Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and Rockland Counties. A diverse panel of independent expert health care judges guided the selection process.
“Dr. Bergasa, a distinguished member of PAGNY, embodies the very set of values and bedside manners that every patient wishes and needs,” said Dr. Luis R. Marcos, PAGNY CEO. “Her distinctive warm smile projects the humanity that is so powerful and so precious in the health care world. Indeed, Dr. Bergasa’s knowledge and dedication and her amazing ability to create healing partnerships not only have made her loved and sought after by patients, but have led to remarkable levels of patient satisfaction, compliance, and treatment outcomes.”
Dr. Bijan Safai, President of the PAGNY Board of Directors, said “Our entire PAGNY family is extremely proud to have nominated our own Dr. Nora V. Bergasa, Chief, Department of Medicine, NYC Health + Hospitals /Metropolitan for the Heritage Innovation in Healthcare Delivery Award. We are so pleased that she has been selected as the 2017 winner. Her tireless energy, caring concern for her patients and commitment to excellence make her the obvious choice for this award. Her research and treatment of individuals with the co-morbidities of mental illness and chronic liver disease has truly been innovative in both approach and outcomes. Congratulations on this well-deserved and outstanding recognition. You make us all proud, Dr. Bergasa.”
Dr. Bergasa said, “I’m very moved and honored by this award from the Heritage Provider Network and Crain’s New York Business.
“I pray every day for the continuous opportunity to serve as a physician in the provision of health care, and to teach, and to ask questions in an effort to inspire medical students and physicians in training to improve knowledge in the medical field.
“I thank the leadership of PAGNY and NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan for its support and for giving me the privilege to execute their mission to provide excellent quality of care in our daily work.”
“This award for Dr. Bergasa is well-earned,” said Stanley Brezenoff, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals. “Providing high-quality care is at the core of everything we do, and the exceptional care she provides to her patients with hepatitis sets a high bar for the providers throughout our health system.”
Dr. Bergasa, who is also Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College, is recognized internationally for her research on pruritus in liver disease. According to Thompson Reuter’s Web of Science, Dr. Bergasa’s papers have been cited 3,436 times. Her “h-index”—which measures the productivity and impact of a scientist’s research—is an impressive 30. Last year, Dr. Bergasa was awarded a prestigious Mastership from the American College of Physicians, a national organization of internists.
As Chief of Medicine at Metropolitan, Dr. Bergasa has focused her tenure on providing cohesive medical care by implementing geographic distribution of medical admissions, the conduct of multidisciplinary rounds, and the initiation of a discharge clinic. She has also provided the leadership to create a gastroenterology fellowship program.
Dr. Bergasa has extensive experience in hepatology, including the care of patients with liver disease and psychiatric and substance abuse co-morbidities. One of her goals has been to take the treatment of chronic viral hepatitis to patients who are attended in behavioral health. With the collaboration with the hospital’s Department of Psychiatry, this has led to the establishment of a hepatitis clinic.
Dr. Bergasa was born in Cuba and graduated from the medical school of the Universidad Central del Este in the Dominican Republic, completing her Internal Medicine Residency and Gastroenterology Fellowship at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. She then trained as a Fellow in liver disease at the National Institutes of Health. She has held faculty positions at Rockefeller University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Columbia University and SUNY Downstate prior to being named Chief of Medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan in 2008 and Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College.