Bringing in the best doctors, Ping added — according to Health Quest, Sarabu was recognized in New York magazine as one of its Top Doctors for 2004 because he had some of the best outcomes in the state for the past 14 years — was an important step in giving the region a reputation as a medical leader in the state.
“The overall quality of medical care has improved tremendously,” Ping said. “The quality results that we show on open-heart surgery with Dr. Mohan Sarabu and his team, they have the best outcomes in the state .…We’re doing difficult cases at Vassar just like they are at New York Presbyterian. Mohan Sarabu and his team have the best outcomes for cardiac surgery in the state, the lowest level of mortality — more people survive and survive longer than anyplace else you go in the state. We’re able to promote that and let people in the community know that we have this world-class service right here in the Hudson Valley. Why would you need to go anyplace else?”
Docs love it here
The same is also true at Saint Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, where public relations coordinator Larry Hughes credited the Hudson Valley itself for a significant role in attracting medical professionals to the area.
“The professionals in the field, the highly-skilled surgeons, they picked this area because they like the lifestyle, like so many of us,” Hughes said. “So then it became incumbent on the medical community to provide them with the kind of equipment they needed to themselves stay local so their patients could stay local.”
At Saint Francis, providing state-of-the-art equipment led to the formation of the Center for Robotic Surgery, which uses the da Vinci Surgical System primarily for abdominal surgery.
