The most important health care decisions don't happen
in isolation.
They happen when leaders come together.
Becker's sixteenth annual meeting brings together more than
3,500
hospital and health system executives this April in
Chicago.
With 800 speakers from Ascension,
Cleveland Clinic, CommonSpirit and more, the conversations get
real. Leaders will share how their scenario planning
for policy shifts, breaking through value based care
barriers, and building clinical teams that translate
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast.
I'm Mackenzie Bean, associate vice president and managing
editor of Becker's Hospital Review.
Today, I am so thrilled to be joined
by Doctor. Eje Akumili,
who is a chief medical officer of Jersey
City Medical Center, a facility of RWJBarnabas
Health, and a clinical associate professor of emergency
medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
Doctor Ekonili, thank you so much for being
here today. How are you doing?
Thank you for having me, Mackenzie. Excellent to
be here. As you said, my name is
EJ Ekonili. I am an emergency physician.
I am also an obesity medicine
chief medical officer at Jersey City Medical Center,
which is a facility of RWJBarnabas
Health, and also a clinical associate professor of
emergency medicine at Rutgers
New Jersey Medical School.
I have, for the past several years, focused
my career in clinical transformations
and complex environments,
such as Jersey City Medical Center, but really
across The United States,
bringing physicians,
nurses, operations together to to improve quality, safety,
and the patient experience.
Jersey City Medical Center is a full spectrum
medical care center in Hudson County. It's
about a 340
bed, very modern hospital,
literally overlooking the Statue Of Liberty in the
New York Harbor.
It is a not for profit hospital.
It is a level two trauma center with
about 17,000
admissions
and 100,000
emergency departments visits annually.
We are a regional referral center for orthopedics,
but also for advanced cardiac care.
We're also teaching hospital with multiple residencies
and fellowships, notably in obstetrics and gynecology,
internal medicine,
orthopedics,
and most recently, fellowships in
rheumatology, gastroenterology.
We're very proud of our multiple,
designations, most recently best maternity hospital by US
News And World Report, but also a magnet
designation
for the fourth time.
Little historical perspective.
Jersey City Medical Center has been
in existence since about 1882
and has really been,
an anchor
community of Jersey City, which is one of
the most diverse
communities in The United States.
We've provided the full spectrum of care, everything
from women's health to advanced cardiac care,
really for life saving
procedures.
We also have an award winning
emergency medical service that,
brings patients to us.
We're very proud at the core of our
mission is to build trust in our community.
I personally believe that,
especially in underserved communities, that
healthcare systems build reliable systems of care. We
invite people from the margins to join in,
and in the end our North stars to
extend healthy years of life.
Yeah. That trust is just such a crucial
building block for high quality health care.
I'm curious. I'm talking to you in,
late January.
As you look back on 2025,
what would you say is the most important
initiative that you led? And can you tell
us about some of the results that you've
seen so far?
Absolutely.
2025,
was, as for many people in health care,
very interesting year.
One of the most important initiative we led,
I would think one of the most important
initiatives anyone can lead in health care, was
really working on our mortality
and hospital acquired infections.
We are now sort of top quartile,
in terms of mortality
among hospitals, our rank in the in in
the country.
We have our lowest rates of hospital acquired
infections,
and we did this by building
a mortality and safety council.
We've really strengthened our early deterioration pathways and
diseases like sepsis,
we have standard escalations,
we have real time data and transparency.
So those are some of the things we've
done and like I said topped us out.
The second thing we've done in 2025
was really honing in on a women's health
strategy.
Reducing our number of c sections
for first time moms,
working with our nursing colleagues on healthy breastfeeding,
access to a community,
just general women's health initiative. And as I
mentioned, and as we're very proud, one of
the results was being designated a best in
class maternity hospital by US News and World
Report.
But something else that we
ask people, somebody who is committed to training
the next generation of physicians, is that we've
had a historic expansion
in our graduate medical education.
As I mentioned, we have many residencies
here at Jersey City Medical
Center. We have seen an unprecedented
growth
in those residences that we already have, like
internal medicine,
but also creating new,
programs in rheumatology
and gastroenterology.
This is very important to us because we
are now
creating not just a new generation of doctors,
but doctors that will statistically
stay locally and take care of this population
that needs the help and care in those
sort of specialties.
So we're really proud of all those things
at Women's Health where we have an incredible
new chair, Doctor. Todd Rosen, who continues to
push the envelope not just in the care
delivery but in the research, making us, something
we're proud of, a research institution
in our mortality and our hospital acquired infections
and like I mentioned that historic expansion in
our graduate medical education. And we continue to
welcome medical students to this historic campus to
take care of this community.
That's so impressive. Some really significant gains in
both mortality,
HAIs, as you said,
a lot of work in women's health, and
then, of course,
expanding and bolstering your your physician pipeline.
How are you planning to build on this
work, or what other big priorities are on
your mind as you're entering 2026
and, thinking about a lot of the headwinds
that we're seeing across the industry right now?
Sure. And even before I talk about 2026,
one more foundational
groundbreaking work we've done is really
pushing the frontiers on innovation.
So lots of talk out there about innovation
in healthcare, but we, with a partnership with
Scitec City, have really seen innovation
as pivotal to access and equity.
For example,
launching BioBeat, which is a cuffless blood pressure
monitor, which gives patients the ability
to monitor their blood pressure at home,
in the comfort of their own home,
without much intervention, and this can now be
sent to their cardiologist.
If you think about cardiac disease and high
blood pressure as prevalent in this community and
a lot of it unrecognized,
we finally started pushing the frontier of what
current technology can help us do to take
care of not just the patients in the
hospital, but the care continuum of patients.
So looking forward to 2026,
our goal is to continue
hardwiring reliability
into care.
Continue, as I mentioned, push innovation like we
talked about,
really,
expanding
things like BioViz, but really expanding that partnership.
So picking up, for big priorities for 2026,
the expansion of our surgical services
will be key.
In 2025,
we launched our,
the DaVinci robot series, which was groundbreaking for
us. And we have expanded surgical volumes, but
we will be, adding
two new operating rooms again to provide access
to a community. So that is important for
us that we increase surgical access, increase surgical
volumes, use the technology that we started in
2025,
get into,
continue to improve surgical care.
But also we'll continue to hone in on
our very, very strong operating principles,
working on our efficiencies and our length of
stay. Those things that not just affect the
bottom line, but the patient's experience of care.
Experience of care in our hospitals is something
that is quintessential to who we are, so
we'll continue to push the envelope not just
in that, but on the very fundamentals of
the work we're doing. So it is surgical
expansion,
building of our two new ORs,
and
really focusing on making the fundamentals
such as length of stay,
patient experience, the trust and well-being that I
come back to so often.
All this, all this keeping equity as an
access, not as good to haves, but as
strong operating principles for us.
Absolutely. I appreciate you laying out those priorities.
And I know, you know, so many systems
nationwide are really looking at
access as as well as capacity as they're
seeing increasing demands on the health care system.
Are you able to elaborate or share any
more details on,
specifically what that looks like in practice for
your hospital hospital in terms of, thinking through
throughput and capacity,
while, like you said, maintaining that trust in
patient experience?
Sure. We've had some changes in our marketplace
with, an unprecedented
increase in patient falling
And having been around to take care of
this community for over a hundred years, we
will continue to do that. So as you
mentioned, it is important that with this
influx of patients, we continue to maintain
the same level of care, the same quality,
the same unprecedented
increase, decrease in us in our infection rate.
So the way to do it is to
work on our efficiency.
Two things. And, you know, efficiency is not
just the bottom line as somebody who's spent
their life thinking about throughput.
Reducing the length of stay in the emergency
room, for example, that makes it possible for
people to come and be seen and go
back home. We have a very robust,
operating,
system that goes across cross really cross disciplinary
from
our emergency room staff to our lab services
to,
really all the ancillary services that service our
emergency room. On the inpatients, we have
really an incredible interdisciplinary
round system where every day we look at
barriers
to discharging patients from the hospital.
But those barriers are complex, some of them
are housing, some of them are just making
sure that patients have safe discharge plans. But
getting patients to their next site of care
efficiently,
compassionately,
and so they can continue their lives. Because
remember the goal of healthcare is to give
people longer healthier lives
and part of that is moving the continuum
of of care along. So that's something that
we're working on with very, very rigorous data
transparency
and,
management.
For seeking that greater efficiency, that makes a
lot of sense.
You know, a lot of what you're outlining
is such important work. It's it's so rewarding,
but it's also no easy task. I'm curious,
what do you think is the hardest thing
that you're gonna have to tackle over the
next twelve months?
So I think in the next twelve months,
we're going to continue to lead through uncertainty
and changes in the marketplace.
So as I've
probably alluded to, RWJBarnabas
is
the latest provider of health care to the,
to the most vulnerable population in the state,
twice more than in our nearest competitor.
And while
other health systems may sort of diverse from
our populations,
Jersey City Medical Center has expanded.
We have but as you know, the very
problems that plague,
you know, The United States, the Auburn populations,
are our patients' problems. And we know this
factually
and data driven because we have our community
needs assessment. So whether it is the rise
in
chronic medical conditions, in obesity,
the mental health dual epidemic that really started
around COVID, the rise in homelessness,
the inflationary
pressures our families are feeling.
All those things are part of the healthcare
ecosystem
because in the end, we want to make
sure our patients are taken care of,
not just in the in the hospital, but
in the community.
We've done many things, and we will continue
to double down on our investment in our
food pharmacy, for example, where we give food
as prescription.
Our community health workers have an incredible reach
where they,
connect with patients where they are and connect
them to community resources.
Our social workers are adept in really working
with patients for a wide variety of circumstances.
So
it is both a thing of pride for
us, but it is a challenge that we'll
continue to walk through because in the end
we're taking care of people and these are
true concerns that continue to, be part of
our world.
Well, doctor Akunili, as you've been talking, I
think it's just so clear how much
passion and care you have for the work
you're doing in the community you serve. So
I just wanna thank you so much for
your time and sharing some of your thoughts
on on leadership, with our listeners today. It's
been such a pleasure speaking with you.
Thank you very much. Thank you for having
me.