A Conversation with Eric C. Rackow, M.D.

At the beginnning of this year, Eric C. Rackow, M.D., assumed the presidency of NYU Hospitals Center. News & Views met with him recently to discuss his perspectives on a wide range of issues involving healthcare, NYU Medical Center, and his new role.

Eric C. Rackow, M.D., the new President of NYU Hospitals Center

You’ve been both a clinician and an administrator. Now, as President of NYU Hospitals Center, what do you think are the biggest challenges we face in healthcare?
One of the biggest challenges is to ensure that academic medical centers, which provide about three-fourths of the highly specialized healthcare in this country, can survive and prosper in challenging economic times. This means we must choose our priorities and plan our programs carefully. We have to identify the most pressing healthcare needs—of our nation and our community. At NYU we have a good grasp of what those needs are now and what they will be in the future. That’s why we’re making major investments in such areas as cancer, cardiac and vascular diseases, imaging, children’s services, the neurosciences, musculoskeletal disease, and rehabilitation medicine.

We also need to understand where the money will come from to meet these needs. It comes primarily from health insurance reimbursements and philanthropy, and we are working hard to optimize our performance in both of these areas.

Ultimately, however, bringing in money isn’t enough. For a hospital to prosper, it must function efficiently. That means that all the people who make up an academic medical center—the doctors, the scientists, the nurses, and all of the staff—must perform to the highest standards of patient care, research, and education. And here, again, I think we can take pride in knowing that we are achieving this at NYU Medical Center. We have an outstanding team in place at every level to make it happen.

Why is it so important that NYU Medical Center have a new clinical facility?
To a large extent, academic medical centers have become tertiary care and critical care institutions. To provide this kind of advanced care, we need a modern, high-tech clinical facility that is centered around operating rooms, intensive care units, minimally invasive procedure rooms, advanced imaging techniques, and emergency services.

As Dean and CEO Robert M. Glickman, M.D., has said, now that construction of the Smilow Research Center is well under way, building a new clinical facility is the next critical step that we must take to ensure that NYU Medical Center remains one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. But if we hope to build this facility within this decade, one thing is abundantly clear: the entire NYU Medical Center family—the faculty, staff, trustees, alumni, and our friends and supporters—must work toward that goal.

Looking ahead one or two decades from now, how do you envision the hospital of the future?
In many respects, I think the hospital of the future will look and function a lot like the NYU Cancer Institute’s new Clinical Center. It will be a multidisciplinary, patient-friendly environment that, to the extent possible, meets the patient’s healthcare needs in a single location. Our services will be organized around the needs of our patients.

How do you view the relationship between the Hospitals and the School of Medicine?
This relationship is another critical part of our future at NYU Medical Center, and under Dean Glickman’s leadership, the spirit of collaboration on our campus is the best that it’s been in many years. While the Hospitals and the School will naturally continue to have their own independent needs and objectives, we share the same goal: to advance medicine while serving the healthcare needs of our community. We’re continually finding new ways to integrate our clinical and academic enterprises, as well as administrative and financial operations. We’re also working more closely with our colleagues at our other hospital affiliates, especially Bellevue, Hospital for Joint Diseases, Downtown Hospital, and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. By fostering a culture of collaboration, we can ensure our excellence for many years to come. And I am very proud to be a part of this new era at NYU Medical Center.