 
Twenty years ago when Keith Safian came on board as president and CEO of Phelps Memorial Hospital Center in Sleepy Hollow, he had a standing appointment with a Con Edison employee who repeatedly threatened to turn off the lights at the cash-strapped facility.
“I was recruited by the board at a time when the hospital was losing a fortune,” Safian said. “Phelps had a $40 million operating budget and a $4.1 million operating loss, which is over ten percent. The institution was really in great jeopardy and couldn”™t sustain itself, so they brought me here to try and turn the place around.”
Turn it around, he has: since 1989 when Safian was hired, the operating budget has increased from $40 million to $188 million. Over the same time period, the hospital staff has grown from 800 employees to 1,540, making Phelps the eighth-largest employer in the county, and the number of physicians on staff has grown from 189 to 450.
“I recognized that the real path to success for Phelps was growth,” Safian said.
Now a 235-bed comprehensive community hospital, Phelps has operated “in the black” in all but one of the past 20 years. Last year, the hospital concluded a five-year capital campaign, which raised $20 million, much of which was used to fund the construction of a new 18,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art emergency department, which opened in 2008.Â
“It is totally focused on the patient,” Safian said of the emergency department. “There is no waiting room; patients go right into a private exam room.”
Patients and visitors can park for free at Phelps”™ five-story, 750-space parking garage.
Finding a parking space can be as difficult as paying for parking, said Safian, who has experienced long lines and parking-token confusion while trying to leave other hospitals.
“Our philosophy is we don”™t want to burden the patients or the visitors. It happened to me once; I had a relative in the hospital and my immediate family spent $50 on parking in one day. People can afford it, but it”™s a hassle and it stresses them out. We understand how people think, and our whole philosophy is to make Phelps simpler and easier to access for our patients.”
Being patient-centric is important to Phelps”™ success; a paid fleet of hospitality helpers drop in on patients for friendly visits and to offer help.Â
“It”™s a big investment on the part of the hospital to improve patient comfort,” Safian said. Employees, some of whom have multiple family members working at Phelps, are also an important asset to the hospital”™s success; in return, Phelps is continuing to award merit increases to employees despite the economic downturn.
Under Safian”™s leadership another key expansion is a 100,000-square-foot medical services building that opened in 2007. The five-story facility has an emergency training center, a wound healing center and an infusion center. The building is also home to Phelps”™ outpatient rehabilitation services, including an aquatherapy pool.
Safian initiated an affiliation with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1995, resulting in Phelps becoming the first non-Manhattan location to provide radiation therapy and medical oncology. On Safian”™s watch, Phelps also became the first Westchester County affiliate of Mount Sinai Hospital and joined the four-hospital HealthStar/Stellaris Network.
Phelps and its Stellaris partner hospitals have installed a hospital information system that allows physicians to enter patient orders electronically and staff to review and update computerized records at the patient”™s bedside.
“All of our patients get a bar-coded wristband,” Safian said. “We bought a machine in the pharmacy that packages each drug into a little individual dose with a barcode, because the big drug companies won”™t spend the money to provide the doses in a safe, deliverable way.”
There”™s a scanner and multi-purpose computer at every patient bedside, Safian said.
“We made this investment for bedside TVs that are Internet terminals, hospital information system terminals and have a barcode scanner,” Safian said. “A doctor can call up the patient”™s medical records right there at the bedside.”™
The patient can go on the Internet watch medical education videos about their procedure, listen to the radio or watch television.
Phelps has also improved patient care by installing a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) that captures, stores, distributes and displays radiologic images. Patients”™ medications are electronically verified before each dose is administered.
Safian is most proud of the growth of the hospital under his tenure.
“Growth, meaning we”™re meeting the needs of the community,” Safian said. “I feel that we”™ve earned the community”™s support and every time I see an increase in patient activity that tells me we have the right service mix and we”™re providing the right quality of care so that patients choose Phelps.”
Safian received two bachelor of science degrees in engineering from the University at Buffalo. He then received an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and began his career in health care administration.
Safian has been active in a number of national, state and regional organizations whose objective is to improve the delivery of health care. He was a member of the American Hospital Association Task Force on Fragmentation of the Delivery System, participated in The Joint Commission”™s Roundtable on the Nursing Shortage, and recently presented at the National Patient Safety Foundation Congress in Washington, D.C.
