Ruben A. Medina and New York Medical College would seem to have been destined for each other. He was born in what was then Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital, which NYMC had established in 1889 in Manhattan as the first teaching hospital to be owned by a medical college. (Today it”™s the Terrance Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center ”“ a clinical site and hospital affiliate of the NYMC School of Medicine.)
Since then, Medina has returned the favor. The founding partner and managing director of RC Solutions Inc. ”“ a 14-year-old boutique consulting firm whose clients range from start-ups to businesses with explosive growth to New York City”™s Office of Emergency Management as it seeks to place migrants in housing ”“ Medina began fundraising for NYMC before the pandemic. Now the medical college will honor him at its third annual golf tournament and brunch at St. Andrew”™s Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson June 26, along with Steven Lansman, M.D., Ph.D., NYMC”™s chair of the Department of Surgery. (See sidebar.)
“It”™s an honor to be honored,” he said with a laugh. “It”™s a great time to get together and hear about the medical college”™s various achievements.”
Those achievements come at what Medina added is a critical moment in the health-care profession post-pandemic “where we still don”™t have enough providers.” Valhalla-based NYMC, part of Touro University, is helping to fill that need by training technicians, nurses, doctors and dentists.
Yet even with such efforts, health care, he said, remains a question of access:
“It all depends on who you are and where you are. You”™re not going to get the level of care in (Brooklyn”™s) Bedford-Stuyvesant that you do in Pound Ridge.”
Where you are includes which state you live in. Nearly eight million of New York state”™s 19.8 million residents are enrolled in Medicaid, according to the state”™s Department of Health ”“ putting it in the nation”™s top tier. (About 3.4 million are enrolled in Medicare.) Nearly a million of Connecticut”™s 3.6 million residents are on Medicaid ”“ placing it in the second tier for Medicaid/CHIP (Children”™s Health Insurance Program) enrollment. (There are 712,549 Connecticut residents covered by Medicare.) However, several Midwestern and Western states ”“ along with Texas and Florida but also Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia ”“ have low enrollments in Medicaid, which was expanded under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Recently, North Carolina”™s legislature voted for it to become the 40th state to expand its Medicaid program.
What about universal coverage? “On some level, universal health care would provide access, Medina said. “But there”™s still the issue of public hospitals,” whose services may be limited, requiring a wait to get into another hospital.
Medina has always been interested in the sciences. Raised in the Bronx, he studied at Brooklyn Technical High School, which specializes in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) classes, before transferring to the prestigious Bronx High School of Science.
“At some point in time, I thought I”™d be a physician and researcher,” he said. “As I went off to college, my interests grew in different directions.”
Those diverging interests have taken him from a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology at Harvard University to an MBA and Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University to a career whose through line has been developing ”“ and, in some cases, saving ”“ health-care systems and organizations in related industries.
“I was interested in creating health-care systems that work to serve people.”
In the early 1990s, he was COO for the Trustees of the City of Boston Health and Hospitals, managing the day-to-day operations of a $75-million public benefit corporation supporting that city”™s municipal health-care system and then became CEO of Sheehan Memorial Hospital, responsible for day-to-day and strategic management of a $20 million financially distressed acute care hospital in Buffalo.
From 1996 to 2009, he was CEO of Promesa Systems Inc., also overseeing day-to-day and strategic management, this time for a $70 million community development organization in the Bronx, with product lines in health care, housing and education. Five years after leaving Promesa, he became managing director of Distinctive Affordable Housing Solutions, where he reorganized and restructured distressed portfolios in that field until 2019.
When Medina isn”™t helping businesses to recover, jump-start their enterprises or grow, he”™s spending time with wife Miriam and their two daughters at their home in Elmsford. Asked about hobbies, he demurred. But in a sense, his avocation is helping NYMC. Indeed, he gets a kick out of sponsored medical students taking part in the tournament. One year when he couldn”™t play, he had a student take his place.
Just as students are preparing to serve others, he said he appreciated being able to serve them.
Registration for New York Medical College”™s third annual golf tournament and brunch at St. Andrew”™s Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson begins at 11:30 a.m. The event is chaired by Martin Katzenstein, M.D. (Class of 1978). Proceeds will support student scholarships and other initiatives that help students on their journeys to becoming health-care professionals.
For tickets and more, click here. nymcalumni.org/registergolf
Surgery chairman to be honored by New York Medical College”¯
Steven Lansman, M.D., Ph.D., chair of New York Medical College”™s Department of Surgery, will be honored with Ruben A. Medina at its June 26 golf tournament and brunch at St. Andrew”™s Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson.”¯
Lansman joined the NYMC faculty in 2005 after serving on the medical staff of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, where he started the hospital”™s heart transplant program and performed the first cardiac transplant there in 1986. Through 2005, he directed Mount Sinai”™s Mechanical Assist and Heart and Lung Transplant Program. Before joining Mount Sinai, he served as interim chief of cardiothoracic surgery for SUNY Brooklyn, the Brooklyn VA Medical Center and Kings County Hospital in New York City.”¯
Lansman has an extensive bibliography in aortic aneurysm surgery and has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, 100 abstracts and presentations and a dozen books and chapters. Since 1988, he has organized and directed the Aortic Symposium series, an internationally recognized forum for aortic surgery. In 2001 and ”™02, he served as president of the New York Society of Thoracic Surgery.”¯
Lansman earned his degrees from State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate and completed a general surgery residency at Montefiore Medical Center and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at SUNY Downstate.”¯
For more, visit nymc.edu.”¯
