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With 25 years of experience in healthcare leadership experience at multiple academic institutions Dr. David Berger, serves as the CEO of University Hospital at Downstate Health Sciences University. Dr. Berger leads the hospital and its outpatient services, home care, community health centers, accountable care organizations, and other related entities. He provides operational and fiscal oversight for University Hospital at Downstate and oversees the development and implementation of hospital-wide policies and procedures that help to improve patient care and satisfaction.
Dr. David Berger was born in Brooklyn and grew up on the South shore of Long Island. As a child, Dr. Berger suffered from asthma and he was often ill and out of school as a child. However, even with all the illness, he graduated from high school at 16 near the top of his class.
Dr. Berger’s medical issues eventually convinced him to become a physician and help others in need. After completing a surgical oncology fellowship at MD Anderson, Dr. Berger moved up the ranks quickly and was recruited to a leadership position at Baylor College of Medicine within five years of his fellowship. At Baylor, he received federal funding for two separate lines of research, and Dr. David Berger was elected president of two academic surgical societies. As a result, he was quickly promoted to tenured Professor.
Improving the Health Care System
A few years ago, Dr. David Berger’s mom developed a medical issue and had a prolonged course with multiple hospital admissions. Dr. David Berger then experienced how difficult it was to navigate the medical system and coordinate care. During this time, he noticed it was very difficult for an average person, which eventually helped him to have a bigger impact on improving the healthcare system by becoming a healthcare leader. To complete his goal, he completed his Master’s in Healthcare Management from Harvard in 2007.
Dr. David Berger has been able to use his experiences and education to build clinical programs, increase efficiency and improve externally reported quality metrics. Under his leadership, the surgical volume doubled, and they were recognized for the best surgical outcomes in VA for consecutive 11 years. As a result Dr. Berger was recruited to Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center first as the Chief Medical Officer and eventually becoming the Chief Operating Officer. Over the course of three years, the hospital was able to grow its surgical volume and improve from a Leapfrog “D” hospital to a Leapfrog “A” hospital. Additionally, four of the major clinical service lines became ranked in the top 40 in U.S. News and World Report.
Accepting the Potential of Digital Health
During his tenure as the Chief Operative Care Line Executive at Michael E. Debakey, Dr. David Berger realized the potential of digital health to transform the way how healthcare is being delivered. The VA was the first integrated healthcare delivery system to develop a fully functional electronic health record. Dr. Berger quickly learned how data analytics could improve the quality of care provided to a very large population. By using the data, the hospital also performed brilliantly in terms of morbidity and mortality.
The hospital’s leadership has also implemented digital tools to assist operations. It is the second hospital in the country to implement a workflow control system with real-time RFID to enhance throughput. Additionally, Dr. Berger was an early adopter of telehealth. At the VA he helped to build telehealth programs in preoperative evaluation, virtual tumor boards, and virtual postoperative recovery. At the University of Florida – Central Florida Dr. Berger led the Covid-19 response and worked to build tele-triage, tele-ICU, tele-primary care and tele- psychiatry platforms.
Serving the Community
University Hospital at Downstate is a safety net hospital caring for a community, which is dealing with many issues around social determinants of health. Hospital staff has to work hard to identify and address the health care issues its patients face daily. The local community has a high rate of diabetes, hypertension, pregnancy complications, renal failure, and heart disease. University Hospital at Downstate is the only renal transplant program in a borough of 2.7 million people. Dr. Berger has worked with his senior leadership team to reinvigorate this crucial program. This year the transplant service is on track to transplant over 70 patients with outstanding outcomes.
What Success Looks Like
Dr. Berger believes, success personally is a happy marriage and well-adjusted children. Professionally, success is providing every patient with the right care in the right place every time. Additionally, he loves coaching and mentoring others. Therefore, success is also helping others to achieve what they view as success.
The two keys to his life are resiliency and home support. Additionally, he also has had a leadership coach through much of his journey who has helped him navigate challenges.
Future Roadmap
As the whole world is slowly coming out of the Covid pandemic, Dr. David Berger and his team are trying to focus on how they can provide better care to their community while dealing with the issues around workforce burnout and shortages. The keys for the team will be partnering with other providers and community-based organizations within central Brooklyn to be able to provide exceptional care. Dr. David Berger is also focused on using technology to better connect with patients and to make work easier for the dedicated staff. After dealing with a pandemic for over two years many of the hospital’s employees are suffering burnout. So, the entire team is working to identify the causes of burnout and how they can best support the workers. The hospital is currently engaged in a journey to become a highly reliable organization. Its goal is to become the best place to give care and the best place to get care in NYC.
