President’s Message: THIS YEAR’S TOP CASTLE CONNOLLY DOCS!
Gary G. Terrinoni
This year, I am proud to announce that 12 of our doctors were cited by Castle Connolly’s 2026 Top Doctors, recognized as the best in their field by their fellow physicians. Our top docs have expertise that spans from family medicine, to neurology, to pediatric specialties and more. Our state-ofthe-art facilities, like The Brooklyn Cancer Center, the Physicians Pavillion, and our recently opened Family & Women’s Health Center, are all within walking distance from each other, meaning you are never more than a few minutes away from comprehensive award-winning treatment.
But buildings don’t treat people, doctors do! Without further ado, this year’s Top Doctors:
• Sherly Abraham, MD, Family Medicine
• Armand P. Asarian, MD, General Surgery
• Leonard B. Berkowitz, MD, Infectious Disease
• Edward Chai, MD, Neurology
• Ivan Colon, MD, Urology
• Bryan J. Conti, MD, Orthopedic Surgery
• Louis Gerolemou, DO, Pulmonary Disease
• Ramesh Gulrajani, MD, Pulmonary Disease
It’s Still Worth Getting Your Flu Shot!
• Abraham Jelin, MD, Pediatric Gastroenterology
• Patrick LeBlanc, MD, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
• Shahzaib Nabi, MD, Hematology/Oncology
• Maxim Shulimovich, DO, Hematology/Oncology
To all our physicians, some of you go unnoticed because you are invisible to Castle Connolly. To even be considered, you must register through their provider portal. It would be great to see all TBHC healthcare providers, including physicians (MD, DO, DPM) and dentists (DDS, DMD), register their accounts.
By having a Castle Connolly account, you can be nominated by your peers, nominate other colleagues, and update your profile information, including practice location. Visit here to start/update an existing account.
Each calendar year, you are allotted the following number of nominations; we encourage you to use your full quota on your TBHC colleagues:
• 15 nominations in your own specialty
• 7 nominations in Family Medicine
• 7 nominations in Internal Medicine
• 7 nominations in Pediatrics
• 5 nominations in all other specialties
After December 31, your quota will reset for the upcoming new year. Head over to Employee Health (near the Cafeteria). No appointment needed. Hours are: Monday and Friday, 8 am to 4 pm; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 9 am to 5 pm; closed every day between 12 and 1 pm for lunch.
Rounds
Looking back on late 2025 and early 2026, we celebrated the holidays, screened scores of our neighbors for high blood pressure, educated and received the generosity of many of our community partners. Here’s a peek!
Carin Jean Louis, NP, Family Medicine, spoke at the 4th Annual Diabetes Awareness Week event at Medgar Evers College in November.
Our Community Advisory Board (CAB) and various partners generously donated more than 1,200 toys to our pediatric patients. Shown here is Fulvia Forbes by our gorgeous lobby tree on the CAB’s Toy Drive Day in December. Thank you, also, to: NYC Department of Buildings, First Calvary Baptist Church, Zion Baptist Church and the 79th Police Precinct.
The Community Advisory Board’s Chair, Dr. Kim Best, represented TBHC at a breakfast event hosted by the Sickle Cell Thalassemia Patients Network in December.
TBHC screened for blood pressure at the Masjid At-Taqwa Health Fair in January.
The TBHC Staff celebrated the holidays in December with a hospital luncheon!
On February 6, TBHC joined the Annual Interfaith Breakfast featuring Mayor Zohran Mamdani, among other important faith, community and political leaders.
Epic Live in Dentistry and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery
Good news for our patients and our staff—Dentistry has joined Epic! This means that patients can experience all the benefits of MyChart for their dental care, too, including:
• Easy, online appointments
• All ambulatory care health information at TBHC, including Dentistry, is now in one place, such as appointments, histories and test results
• Providers have a more comprehensive patient record to refer to
Congratulations to Dr. Harry Dym, Chair, Dentistry and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery; Dr. Ricardo Boyce, Vice Chair, Dentistry and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery; and the entire Dentistry team for their collaboration and hard work throughout this implementation.
Special thanks for their dedication and expertise in making this launch possible go to: Javier Velez, Assistant Director, Dentistry and Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery; Tameca Miller, Director, EHR Applications; Murali Bolla, Epic Training Manager; Cheryl Laiken, Senior Epic Principal Trainer; Ranin Alnajjar, Senior Epic Manager, Professional Billing; Shaheed Majid, Epic Analyst; Chelsea Corbin, Senior Epic Ambulatory Analyst; Talma Joseph, Senior Epic Cadence Prelude Ambulatory Analyst; and Sheila Anane, VP, Ambulatory Operations.
If your patients (or you!) need to sign up for MyChart, use this QR code or visit tbh.org
Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month Coming
Up!
March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and our Gastroenterology Division has a number of things planned! Note the two events below, but also keep your eyes open for a Lunch & Learn on the rising rates of colorectal cancer in younger people. And finally, if you are 45 or older or if you are younger with any family history of colorectal cancer, please make an appointment for a colonoscopy consult with our excellent GI team through Open Scheduling (scan the QR code).
Open Scheduling
MyChart
PATIENT TESTIMONIAL
If You Know, You Know
Working at TBHC has never been a chore to Audrey Lewis. “I’m like a kid in a candy store,” says the longtime Human Resources Specialist. “I love what I’m doing.” In fact, after retiring in 2022, she missed work so much that she returned to TBHC, where she is now in her 33rd year.
What happens when you, a longtime employee, find yourself in need of medical care? “When you work in a hospital, you know what’s what. You know if it’s a good place to go,” she says. “I can tell you this about TBHC: I recommend it to anyone and everyone because we’ve got excellent doctors.”
In fact, Ms. Lewis gets all her routine care at TBHC—dentistry, primary care, you name it. After developing a painful foot condition known as hammerhead toe, she met with O. Joseph Falcone, DPM, Chief of Podiatric Foot and Ankle Surgery, who scheduled her for surgery. Of course, she already knew Dr. Falcone and his staff (after 33 years, she knows everyone!) and she knew she was in good hands.
Dr. Falcone is not only chief of his surgical division, he’s also Medical Director of the Wound Care Center and Director of the Podiatric Medicine & Surgery Residency. He established the residency program when he joined the hospital in 2014. “When you work for any organization, it must be able to support and service the patients,” he says. “Patient care must be number one, but as an institution, we must also be giving back to the community beyond our care. For me, that meant training
new generations of podiatric surgeons, many who stay in the community.”
According to Dr. Falcone, doing a good job starts with leadership. “The doctors see that leadership has their back,” he says. “The job I want to do is take
excellent care of our neighbors, and it is what hospital leadership wants, too. Patient care is the anchor of the TBHC culture, and it only gets better every day, every year.”
As for Ms. Lewis? She maintains, “If you come to TBHC, you will not be disappointed.”
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A publication of The Brooklyn Hospital Center Marketing and Communications Department.
If you have an idea for an article or feedback on this newsletter, please contact Kim Flodin at x8271 or kflodin@tbh.org.
