Deborah Visconi is the President & CEO of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center. – Bergen New Bridge Medical Center
Bergen New Bridge Medical Center is a modern, mission-driven healthcare center that is leading the way in behavioral health, social care integration, and community-focused medicine. Slowly and systematically, our medical center has evolved dramatically over the past decade and has expanded our ability to care for “the whole person.”
Because Bergen New Bridge is a not-for-profit safety net hospital it has a special role in the greater Bergen County Community.
Alongside spectacular technological advances in medical care, there has been a quieter, but no less remarkable, no less impactful change in how hospitals treat the individuals who come through our doors. I’m speaking of our growing awareness – and our response to that awareness – that if we are to help advance the health of our communities, we must serve not just the physical, medical needs of the person who stands before us, but also their wellbeing.
At Bergen New Bridge, we recently served a patient whose situation, and journey, epitomized this change.
A 75-year-old woman was brought to our emergency department by Saddle Brook police. She had been scammed by someone who pretended to lease her an apartment. In truth, there was no apartment for her. Instead, she was left outside in the cold for hours, with all her belongings with nowhere to go, no one to call. Already suffering from multiple medical conditions, as do many elderly people, she had become extremely dehydrated, and her conditions were exacerbated and became life-threatening. She had no home, no support system, and nowhere to turn.
In the past, and perhaps at another hospital today, she might have been treated, stabilized and discharged. The job of healing had been done. And when hospitals were focused solely on healing there would have been no criticism of her care from any quarter – despite the fact that she, now “healed” would have been discharged to deal alone with the very set of circumstances that brought her to the hospital in the first place, left alone to navigate and address what we recognize to be an impossible set of obstacles.
But at Bergen New Bridge, in 2025, the notion of care has evolved, and the tools and resources we’ve put into place enable us to take a different approach. We no longer just treat patients’ physical and mental needs and symptoms, we now have in place tools and systems and programs and protocols to advocate for them, support them, and find solutions to their non-medical challenges.
Recognizing that this woman needed more than just medical attention, our multi-disciplinary team immediately mobilized. Our emergency department clinicians provided immediate care, ensuring she was rehydrated and stabilized.
Our medical teams, including nursing staff and physicians, determined that due to her ambulatory challenges and complex health conditions, she couldn’t simply be discharged to a shelter, so our inpatient team admitted her for further care.
While all this transpired, social work and clinical integration navigators worked to assess her current and long-term non-medical, social welfare needs. The result: we are now helping her secure a higher level of supportive housing where she can live safely and thrive.
This is the kind of quiet, compassionate work that happens every day at Bergen New Bridge. These cases often don’t make headlines or go viral on social media, but they are the fabric of what we do: restoring dignity, rebuilding lives, and ensuring no one falls through the cracks.
In fact, this woman’s story – and Bergen New Bridge’s role in it – deserves to be shared, because it could someday be our own story or the story of someone we love.
Equally important, this woman’s story is exactly why we need to oppose proposed federal budget cuts that would include eliminating the nonprofit status of publicly owned hospitals like Bergen New Bridge. Publicly owned hospitals are owned directly by taxpayers, the residents and businesses in the communities they serve. Safety net hospitals already struggle to find funding to meet the growing needs of their patients and do not need additional challenges in providing high quality, compassionate care.
Vulnerable people rely on Bergen New Bridge, and not-for-profit medical centers like us, for essential lifesaving support and services and we cannot let them down.
Deborah Visconi is the President & CEO of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center.
The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ROI-NJ.
