Community Leadership Award, Winner: Anthony Ferreri

It's never a surprise when a cousin, a neighbor and a friend from high school calls Anthony Ferreri at home to let him know they are on the way to the hospital.

The born-and-raised Staten Islander might not be the one providing the care to his friends and family, but he is, in many ways, the face of Staten Island University Hospital. As CEO of the 663-bed teaching hospital, Ferreri has led the organization, its employees and the community through some of the borough's toughest challenges, and has publicly shared some of his own.

“These are my friends, these are my family members and these are my neighbors that come to this hospital,” Ferreri said. “I take the idea of community in a much stronger way because I'm invested heavily in Staten Island.”

For his many achievements inside and outside of the organization he runs, Ferreri is this year's winner of Modern Healthcare's Community Leadership Award.

In the 11 years that Ferreri, 63, has been chief executive, Staten Island was battered by two powerful storms just a year apart, but first came another disaster. The borough was hard-hit by the 2003 ferry crash that killed 11 people and injured 71 others just two years after Sept. 11. The first storm was Hurricane Irene in August 2011, which prompted the first ever evacuation of the hospital and transfer of 300 patients to other hospitals in New York state. In October 2012, thousands of borough residents, including 150 hospital employees, lost their homes during Superstorm Sandy. Just blocks from the beach, the hospital served as a temporary shelter for people who fled flooding and set up a shop to provide employees with free food, toiletries and blankets.

The main building of the hospital wasn't damaged, but the facility's administrative offices and the hospital lab were destroyed. Staten Island University Hospital received $28 million in funding from the city to help it prepare for future storms.

During the mandatory evacuation in advance of Irene, Ferreri's skills as a leader of the hospital and the community were evident to others. “He kept the community comfortable, he moderated fears and worries, and he kept morale of staff at a very high level,” said Michael Dowling, president and CEO of the 18-hospital North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, which owns Staten Island University Hospital.

Prior to taking the top leadership role at the hospital, it was Ferreri who in 2002 came up with the idea of using an external wall at the hospital to memorialize the hundreds of residents of Staten Island who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, creating the nation's first permanent memorial to Sept. 11.

And in a community where financial issues shut down two other hospitals in the past decade, Staten Island University Hospital has had to boost its spending on charity care—it now spends about $26 million each year on charity care, up from $7 million in 2006—and redesigned its emergency department to better suit the 85,000 patient visits it now brings in each year.

It was building the $39 million ED that pushed Ferreri to tap into his connections within the community. The hospital decided to sell unused property to a developer for townhomes—the kind of thing that raises red flags on Staten Island about increases in traffic—to raise money for the new facility. But it was Ferreri who encouraged local lawmakers to also build a school on that property to offset some of the pushback. The new department opened in 2009.

Ferreri's ties run deep in the community as well. The hospital displays a records book showing that Ferreri's grandfather was treated there in 1929. He is quick to mention that his first grandchild was born at Staten Island University Hospital and that he underwent open heart surgery and treatment for breast cancer at the facility.

The diagnosis of breast cancer in February of last year prompted Ferreri to take on a new role, this time as an educator, appearing on local radio and TV shows to talk about the risks of breast cancer in men and the need for greater awareness about a cancer that affects about 2,300 men in the U.S. each year but has significantly higher mortality rates than breast cancer in women.

Under Ferreri, the hospital developed a partnership with the Staten Island Economic Development Corp. to launch a health and wellness expo. Last month, it provided 1,200 free screenings to Staten Island residents.

“Our responsibility now has actually moved outside of the hospital,” Ferreri said.

And so have Ferreri's roles. He now also serves as regional executive director of the North Shore-LIJ Health System's western region, which includes oversight of Lenox Hill Hospital and two other facilities in Manhattan.

Follow Jaimy Lee on Twitter: @MHjlee