Ashook Ramsaran appointed Chair of NY Presbyterian Hospital Queens Community Advisory Council
Indian Diaspora Council International (IDC) president Ashook Ramsaran has been appointed Chair of the Community Advisory Council (CAC) at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Queens (NY-P/Q). The formal announcement was made at CAC’s general membership meeting on May 17, 2017 by Willa Brody, Director of NYP/Q External Affairs and welcomed by Jaclyn Mucaria, President of NYP/Q. Ramsaran served previously as Secretary of the 20-member CAC, with Stan Markowitz as Chair & Fran Zanni as Co-Chair.
New York-Presbyterian Queens, headquartered in Flushing, New York, is a community teaching hospital affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine, serving Queens and metro New York residents. The 535-bed tertiary care facility provides services in 14 clinical departments and numerous sub-specialties. Annually over 15,000 surgeries and 4,000 infant deliveries are performed at NY-P/Q. With its network of affiliated primary and multispecialty care physician practices and community-based health centers, NY-P/Q provides approximately 162,000 ambulatory care visits and 124,000 emergency service visits annually.
The Community Advisory Council (CAC), under the direction and guidance of NY-P/Q’s Office of External Affairs, brings together a diverse and dynamic representation of all segments of the residential, civic and commercial community served by NY-P/Q medical system, to assist NY-P/Q executives, administrators and medical staff, by focusing on and understanding NY-P/Q policies, programs and operations. As such, CAC members are able to assess and report on the impact of same in the communities their respective communities. This is accomplished through approved outreach activities, as well as participation in hospital programs when community engagement is required or desired. The CAC provides a valuable forum for the free-flow interchange of opinions, feedback, information and recommendations to improve NYP/Q’s reputation for outstanding medical care in the Borough of Queens and beyond.
Ramsaran was born in Guyana and is a long time resident of Queens and graduate of Polytechnic Institute of New York; founder/CEO of Ramex, a manufacturing company in College Point; an active community advocate and preservationist, president of Indian Diaspora Council International, vice president, Queens Civic Congress and immediate past president, GOPIO International. Ramsaran is also executive committee member of NY-P/Q Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) Program; committee member of NY-P/Q Patient & Family Advisory Partnership Committee (PFAP); recording secretary Fresh Meadows Civic Association, board member of Center for Latin America & Caribbean Studies at St John’s University, New York.
Upon accepting the appointment, Ramsaran remarked that he “is honored to serve as Chair of NY-P/Q’s Community Advisory Council and grateful for the confidence of NY-P/Q management and CAC members in my abilities to fulfill the responsibilities, while NY-P/Q is aggressively adapting with proactive expansion of services, programs and facilities to meet patient needs and challenges, noting the rapidly changing New York demographics, in particular the Borough of Queens.”