John T. Mather Memorial Hospital’s Auxiliary received the Hospital of the Year Award, Large Hospital Category, from the Hospital Association of New York (HANYS) for demonstrating “outstanding achievement and service within its healthcare facility and community.”
The award was presented on Oct. 26 in Albany at HANYS’ 51st Annual 2017 Institute for Healthcare Auxiliaries and Volunteer Leaders. HANYS established the Auxiliary of the Year Award to recognize numerous ways that auxiliaries help strengthen New York State’s healthcare system.
Since its founding in 1949, the Mather Auxiliary was has raised more than $6 million through its fundraising activities, including the Thrift Shop, Gift Shop, lobby sales and events such as the annual Thrift Shop Fashion Show. The award noted the Auxiliary’s $210,000 donation to support the needs of the hospital’s Environmental, Engineering, and Nutritional Services departments, and its participation in the hospital’s Paint Port Pink breast cancer awareness community outreach, which this year had more than 100 community partners including local businesses, schools, library and theater. The Auxiliary distributes literature about breast health and pink lights to the local businesses along the main streets in Port Jefferson to display in October. This year, the Auxiliary also staffed an advocacy table encouraging employees, volunteers, and visitors to email their legislators about the harm that proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would cause for their community, including losing healthcare coverage.
The Auxiliary is a self-governing membership organization that is directly accountable to the hospital administration. Auxiliary members may or not be service volunteers at Mather. The primary purpose of the Auxiliary is fundraising. The Auxiliary’s fundraising has supported many projects and equipment purchases at Mather over the years, most recently the renovation of the 2 South patient unit. The Auxiliary also contributed funds toward the construction of the Arthur & Linda Calace Foundation Pavilion and the purchase of a 320-slice CT scanner.
John T. Mather Memorial Hospital is an accredited 248-bed, non-profit community teaching hospital dedicated to providing a wide spectrum of high quality healthcare services to Suffolk County residents, showing compassion and respect and treating each patient in the manner we would wish for our loved ones. Mather has earned the prestigious Magnet® recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), which recognizes healthcare organizations for quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice. Mather is the only Long Island hospital to earn four stars from The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for patient experience, safety, and timely and effective care measures since July, 2016. Mather also was ranked 21st out of almost 250 hospitals in New York State in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals rankings.
Photo: Mather Auxiliary President Barbara Zinna holds the Auxiliary of the Year award.