Ronald J. Corti, president and CEO
967 N. Broadway, Yonkers
914-964-4444
What was your path to becoming CEO?
“I started as a Medicare auditor for Blue Cross Blue Shield. I did various audits for about three years and while I was working on the Mount Sinai (Medical Center) audit, they offered me a job with a significant salary increase, which is what brought me to the hospital side. Working for Mount Sinai, this world-famous institution, I just saw so many opportunities on how my skill-set could help them. When you work for a big organization, you have influence, but it is limited. With the knowledge that I had gained working those five years at Mount Sinai, I wondered if I could be a game-changer for some smaller hospitals that I had audited earlier in my career. I ended up at Yonkers General Hospital, which later merged into St. John”™s Riverside. Then they appointed me to CEO at Community Hospital at Dobbs Ferry and, ultimately, I was appointed CEO of St. John”™s Riverside Hospital. My background is in finance. I consider myself a fixer, particularly on the financial side. However, one of my strongest leadership qualities is my ability to create teams that improve things, which attracted our board to hire me.”
What makes St. John”™s Riverside Hospital distinctive?
“The key to every organization is the corporate culture and the corporate culture at St. John”™s is ”˜we are a family.”™ We are community oriented. We care about each other and we care about the community we serve. We are blessed to have the best nurses, physicians and health-care professionals. And I think that”™s the magic of St. John”™s and when people come into our facilities, that is what they feel and that is our greatest success. Although I can”™t take credit for creating that culture, I can tell you that our culture has maintained itself despite all the challenges. We were able to bring that culture to Dobbs Ferry and the former Yonkers General.”
What are the specialties at St. John”™s?
“”¦Let”™s start with our access points. Most people come through our doors into our emergency room. We are blessed to have the best physician staff in our ERs. Most of them are multiboarded. Many of them came from (NewYork-Presbyterian). They are seasoned, intelligent, proficient practitioners. “The other access point is maternity. We are the only maternity service in the city of Yonkers. We have great OB/GYNs. We have delivered the most babies in (Westchester) county and it”™s an area in which we thrive. Another area of expertise is orthopedics. Our orthopedic surgeons are talented, and they bring in the latest technology ”“ MAKOplasty Robotic hip and knee replacements. No one in New York state had it and we were the first in Westchester to have it. Frankly, it was a game-changer for us. We do probably as many joint replacements as any other hospital in the region and our outcomes have been fantastic. Unfortunately, when you look at disease classes in Westchester County, you will see cardiac disease and cancer with the most significant prevalence. We have great cardiologists and we have the best oncologist in the county in Norman Rosen, M.D. The health of our community depends on our primary-care physicians and our community having access to care. What is wonderful about St. John”™s is the large number of primary-care physicians, who have done a great job keeping our community healthy. We also started several services that have excelled and produced fantastic outcomes. For example, we have led bariatric surgeries with Dominick Artuso, M.D., and Jonathan Arad, M.D. They continue to do great work and improve the health of those who are morbidly obese and get them on the road to achieving a healthy lifestyle.
Increasingly, hospitals are becoming part of health systems. What are the advantages of such networks?
“We continue to be an independent hospital. We want to join a larger system, because it would give us access to more subspecialists and a vast ambulator delivery system. We realize that most individuals would rather be cared for in the community where they live rather than have to travel to another area with which they are unfamiliar. If you think of that from a patient perspective, anxiety is heightened by dealing with an illness. Then you have to leave the community where you live and receive health care, which takes you to a stranger environment, where you probably get great care. Still, if the same care were available in the patient”™s community, it”™s a much better experience. We want to join a bigger system, one that has a similar culture to ours. We like the Montefiore Health System Inc. We were very close to joining it. Then, the Covid outbreak occurred. Maybe one day in the future we will. We believe that if we could partner with a bigger system, it would give us more resources, more ability to access capital for technology and subspecialists so the people who live in Yonkers and the river towns could stay here to get the best care in the metropolitan area.”
What do you see in the future for St. John”™s Riverside Hospital?
“If I had a crystal ball and you asked me to look into the future, what do I see for St. John”™s? I see more subspecialists in surgery being available to this community. I see more ambulatory-care delivery sites as more services move from inpatient to outpatient settings and I see us as part of a bigger system. I think we would be a great partner. I think we are blessed by geography. We are blessed by population density and we are blessed by our culture in this hospital. And I think any larger system would want us to be part of it, because we would only enhance reputation.”
For more, visit riversidehealth.org.
