Harrison Medical Center

Pelham Physician Recognized for Haiti Medical Relief Work

Dr. Richard Garvey will receive the prestigious “Spirit of the Red Cross” award on Thursday for the surgery relief he offered in Haiti after last year’s devastating earthquake.

Garvey, 49, a Pelham resident and chief of plastic surgery at Sound Shore Medical Center in New Rochelle and Lawrence Hospital Center in Bronxville, jetted to Haiti after hearing about the mounting death toll. For a week, he closed wounds, completed amputations and removed dirt or dead tissue from victims.

“It must be massive chaos,” Garvey remembers thinking while watching the news reports. “I need to get down there and see if I can help.”

The American Red Cross’ Westchester chapter will recognize Garvey for his life-saving volunteer service at a breakfast on Thursday at the Rye Town Hilton.

“We tried to get people back on their feet, if they had feet,” Garvey said of the medical procedures he performed. “It was a constant source of opportunities to help your fellow man.”

One patient, a boy of about 19, had severe leg trauma with a long section of bone exposed and vascular damage. Dr. Garvey told him, through an interpreter, that he would lose his leg if he stayed Haiti.

“The poor kid just broke down crying,” Garvey noted.

With the help of a nurse, though, Garvey brought the boy to Jacobi Medical Center for surgery.

“We were able to save this kid's leg,” he said. Garvey received a picture of his former patient playing soccer with his newly healed leg. “Not so bad,” he remarked with a smile.

In addition to using his hands to heal, Garvey applies his digits to musical instruments to help those in need. He played at a Red Cross benefit in New Rochelle on Saturday to raise money for the victims of the tornado in Joplin, Mo. Garvey has also performed on behalf of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the recent tsunami in Japan.

“In today's era, you need to extend a hand,” he said.

This lesson of altruism came to Garvey early on in life. The youngest of six kids who grew up in the Bronx, he was the frequent caretaker for a sister, Valerie, who suffered from spina bifada.

“Valerie lived on love,” said Garvey, who often measured his sister's medication or would watch with reverence as the family doctor took care of her during a medical crisis.

His sister was a frequent target of taunting bullies, which made the young Garvey sensitive to the pain and suffering that a person's appearance can cause.

Harrison Medical Center Deploys GE Healthcare's eHealth ...

Supports our ‘Vision 2015’ strategic priorities around physician and provider alignment, operations redesign, and cultural transformation. GE’s HIE platform is helping us to improve the quality and efficiency of the care our clinician community provides our patients.”

Each year, Harrison Medical Center supports 75,000 Emergency Department visits, 17,000 in-patient visits and 195,000 outpatient visits across its five locations. Having made the technology transition to Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) between 2008 and 2010, Harrison turned to GE’s eHealth Solutions for the next phase of information technology leadership. Its goal was to enable information sharing and clinical collaboration across facilities with 415 physicians using multiple, different EMR systems, which could not readily exchange needed clinical data.

The eHealth Information Exchange is now live, allowing physicians to search and view patient documents such as history and physicals, lab and pathology reports from within their EMR workflow. GE’s HIE solution supports GE Healthcare’s own Centricity EMR , used by Harrison’s affiliated physicians, as well as non-GE clinical software products.

Harrison is using MatchMetrix EMPI, developed by NextGate , for matching and linking patient information in the absence of a common identifier, allowing providers to achieve a single view of patients. NextGate’s EMPI uses optimized matching algorithms to identify, index, and resolve related patient records spread over different applications and disparate systems. GE Healthcare and NextGate are working together at numerous customer sites in addition to Harrison.

Earl Jones , Vice President and General Manager of GE Healthcare’s eHealth Solutions adds, “Our commitment to Harrison Medical Center is to help them meet near-term goals for their Health Information Exchange and to provide innovative solutions that help Harrison leverage its HIE investment to enhance care team coordination, patient engagement, and chronic disease management as the center grows.