NEWS

Morris native bringing attention to hidden hospital

Jessica Nocera
Correspondent

Robert Hosken was practically dead when he arrived at Kindred Hospital.

“I was sold, everything was shut down,” Hosken said. “I had fluid around my heart, my kidneys were failing and my liver and they brought me back.”

Despite the dire outlook when Hosken arrived at Kindred Hospital on March 5, he progressed enough that he became an outpatient on March 25.

Kindred Hospital may not be as well known as other hospitals in the area but it is the largest provider of post acute care in the nation, said Michael Pizzano, who was recently named chief executive officer (CEO) in November 2015. For the two years prior to that, he was director of sales and marketing.

This is because Kindred’s are “hospitals within hospitals,” Pizzano said. The Kindred that Pizzano oversees is located on the third floor of St. Clare’s Hospital in Dover and has 45 beds.

There are two other Kindred Hospitals located in New Jersey; in Wayne and Rahway.

“We are like a glorified ICU (Intensive Care Unit),” he said. “You don’t expect to come here, my patients are very, very sick.”

Pizzano said Kindred is the “bridge between a rehab and a nursing home.”

Even with that being said, there have been many success stories to come out of Kindred, like Hosken’s due to the staff’s ability to provide, “aggressive care,” Pizzano said.

“The staff here is great, they work really hard to produce these great success stories,” he said.

Chris Ruhren, chief clinical officer, has been a nurse for 37 years and she has never seen a staff work as hard as the staff at Kindred.

“They are all very caring and they all know each other well which helps them work well,” she said. “The team gels together.”

Since the patients are not in the hospital for long, it is the main focus of the staff to get them well and stronger in efficient time, Ruhren said.

“Each patient to come in here normally has more than a single problem,” she added.

A main focus of the staff is to wean the patients off ventilators, so that they can get back to breathing on their own quickly.

“We have a 60 percent wean rate, which is higher than the national average,” Ruhren said.

“You couldn’t have asked for any more help,” Hosken said. “The staff was like family, they did not act like a company as they were all caring people. No words could amount to the justice they deserve.”

Pizzano takes pride in all the work Kindred does, being a local and a “product of Morris County.”

Pizzano, is a 1999 graduate of Morris Knolls High School and after completing his undergraduate studies at Penn State University, he earned his masters in administrative science back in New Jersey at Farleigh Dickinson University.

He worked at Atlantic Health System for more than 11 years and ran their ambulance company before coming to Kindred.

Now, his focus is for people to know all about the work Kindred does.

“We are no different than a large hospital,” he said. “We are licensed exactly the same so even though we might be smaller, we work just as hard.”