Maimonides partners with CAIPA to benefit Asian-American community

It takes two.

Maimonides Medical Center and the Coalition of Asian-American Independent Practices Association (CAIPA) has announced a partnership that will deliver improved care to patients throughout the region, including a new after-hours Express Care Center, as well as CAIPA providing the hospital with better understanding of the Asian-American community.

“This partnership is incredibly important for who we are as Maimonides and we hope it will be as important for the community that we and CAIPA serve and for CAIPA,” said Maimonides President and CEO Kenneth Gibbs at a Tuesday, September 27 press conference. “We are focused very much on dealing with health care today which means dealing with change. To deal with that change, we have to do what we have done best historically, but also be strategic about the future.”

“I think this is a great opportunity to work together with Maimonides,” added Dr. George Liu, president and CEO of CAIPA.

With the Express Care Center, Maimonides will provide basic medical services after regular working hours for the benefit of CAIPA-affiliated physicians and their patients.

“It is a sense that in health care, part of it is access, part of it is time, part of it is meeting people’s needs,” Gibbs said. “A lot of people work. They can’t get their care during hours when they’re working. An after-hours center is a critical component in meeting the needs of the community and we’re pleased to have to chance to work on it with CAIPA.”

CAIPA will provide all of the administrative support and record-keeping for the site.  The hospital will provide specialty physicians during normal daytime hours.

“This will improve quality, decrease emergency visits, decrease unnecessary hospitalizations, and improve quality of care for patients,” said Liu.

Maimonides will also receive a level of cultural education from CAIPA to meet patients’ needs, given the borough’s burgeoning Asian population. “The growth statistics are proven and we within Maimonides are also trying to grow in the same way,” Gibbs said, adding that 1,000 of the hospital’s 6,000 employees are Asian and 50 percent of its physicians are Asians. If you combine the Chinese dialects, 12 percent of patients speak a form of Chinese.

“Brooklyn is the fastest growing Chinese community in New York,” said Liu. “We have a tremendous number of new immigrants coming here and they need the health care. I think it’s important for us to have opportunity to work with one of the best hospitals in Brooklyn.”