Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham Receives $4.3 Million Gift to Support ICU Expansion and Behavioral Health Services
Trotman Family Gift Is the Largest Donation in the History of BID-Needham
Needham, Mass. – Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham (BID Needham) has received a $4.3 million donation from Valerie Trotman and her family to establish the Trotman Family Behavioral Health Patient Navigator and to provide funding assistance for BID Needham’s expanded intensivist medicine coverage in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The gift is the largest donation in the history of the hospital and the Trotman family is the largest donor family to the organization.
“As is well-known, the challenges posed by both the increasing prevalence of behavioral health needs in our community and the importance of outstanding ICU care in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic make this generous gift both timely and essential to our future success as a growing regional health provider,” said John Fogarty, President of BID Needham. “Valerie Trotman and her family have been advocates and supporters of BID Needham for many years. In recognition of this transformational gift, by far the largest in our history, our Outpatient Clinical Center will be renamed in the Trotman family’s honor.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of having accessible, skilled, intensive care units across the country. Made possible by the Trotman family gift, BID Needham significantly increased specialized physician staff in the ICU, allowing the hospital to keep higher acuity cases locally rather than transferring to tertiary care centers, schedule more complex surgeries, and prepare for future COVID-19 outbreaks.
With BID Needham’s expanded service model, critically ill patients are admitted under the care of an intensivist. Also known as a critical care physician, the intensivist is a physician who is board certified in critical care medicine and has advanced training and experience in treating patients who may be suffering from complex conditions that are life threatening. Their specialized training includes providing life support, invasive monitoring techniques, resuscitation and end-of-life care.
The ICU program will be led by new medical director Somnath Bose, MD. Bose has been on staff at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the Department of Anesthesia since 2015. Under Bose’s leadership, the intensivist program will be increasing its capabilities and the number of intensivists and advanced practice providers to deliver outstanding care to the hospital’s most critically ill patients.
“My family’s continued investment in Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham is our expression of admiration for the work that the hospital does to care for and strengthen our community,” said Trotman. “It gives us great satisfaction to be part of the continued expansion and growth at the hospital and we deeply admire the hospital leadership in their relentless pursuit to create and realize new opportunities to bring more medical services close to home.
In addition to ICU services, behavioral health has increasingly become one of the most prevalent needs in the community and has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this, BID Needham will create an endowed Behavioral Health Patient Navigator position. The trained clinician who fills this role will serve as an informational resource to those in the community struggling with mental or behavioral health issues, be a point person with BID Needham’s partners in behavioral health, as well as a resource to the hospital’s Emergency Department doctors and clinicians. The dedicated behavioral health employee will also create peer-to-peer mentoring, support and education programs for individuals and families experiencing similar situations in the behavioral health sphere.
“The generosity of the Trotman family’s transformational gift allows us to deploy vital resources to areas of great need within our hospital,” said Samantha Sherman, Vice President of Philanthropy at BID Needham. “This type of philanthropy support enables us to bring critical ICU and behavioral health services to the community in an accelerated way and will make a significant impact on our community for generations to come. Foundational gifts such as this and other contributions from our supporters are more important now than ever before as we continue to care for the health of our community during this fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
About Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital–Needham
Beth Israel Deaconess-Needham (BID Needham) is a licensed 73-bed acute care community hospital. BID Needham has served residents in Needham and surrounding communities for more than 100 years. The hospital has been recognized by several organizations for quality and safety, including five-out-of-five stars from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an “A” grade from the Leapfrog Group, the Gold Seal of Approval from The Joint Commission and the 2019 American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Quality Achievement Award.
Beth Israel Deaconess-Needham is part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, a health care system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals, more than 4,700 physicians and 39,000 employees in a shared mission to expand access to great care and advance the science and practice of medicine through groundbreaking research and education.
