Hospitalist Improves Psychiatric Care at NewYork-Presbyterian

This April, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital created one of the nation’s first Hospitalist positions dedicated to providing mental health care for inpatients admitted for medical and surgical conditions. Since then, Dr. Anne Skomorowsky has used the position to provide a more consistent approach to psychiatric care for individual patients, while also raising awareness among attending physicians, residents, and physician’s assistants about the mental health needs of the populations they serve.

“We are developing a different model of psychiatric care,” noted Dr. Skomorowsky. “Every morning, I join hospital physicians on their rounds and am able to assess patients for psychiatric disorders and acute behavioralproblems.” This extra layer of attention enables mental health care needs to be factored into patient care earlier, often before symptoms have manifested in ways that interfere with effective treatment. Previously, hospital physicians were only able to call for psychiatric assessments once mental health issues had already grown problematic.

Dr. Skomorowsky described one recent example in which a woman was being repeatedly admitted to the hospital for asthma exacerbations. Through Dr. Skomorowsky’s intervention, it was determined that the patient was also experiencing hyperventilation due to a panic disorder, a diagnosis which enabled significant improvements in her overall medical care. In another case, an elderly woman was experiencing psychotic delusions which made it difficult to determine whether she was being abused by the relative with whom she lived. Through participation in a family meeting, Dr. Skomorowsky was able to help craft a treatment plan for the patient.

The position is officially titled the “Barbara Jonas Psychiatric Hospitalist” for longtime mental health advocate and former psychotherapist Barbara Jonas, who with her husband Donald gave $500,000 to honor NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital President and CEO Herbert Pardes’ longtime commitment to addressing mental health and behavioral issues. Dr. Skomorowsky, the first incumbent in the position, is a psychiatrist with specialized training in working with hospital patients. She has been with the hospital since 2004, and from 1997 to 1999, and from 1998-2008 served as a psychiatrist at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital.