Mother Cabrini Health Foundation
May 19, 2025
Media Coverage as of 5/19/25
Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at what a safety net hospital in the Bronx plans to do with a $5 million grant. We’ll also get details on a judge’s decision to put an outside official in charge of the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.
St. Barnabas Hospital plans to spend $5 million on a program for its nurses.
“Just because we treat poor people doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have the best possible staff,” said Dr. David Perlstein, the president and chief executive of St. Barnabas, a 422-bed hospital in the Bronx.
The money is from $51 million in grants from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, which was formed several years ago after the sale of Fidelis Care, a managed care company that had been set up by the Roman Catholic Church.
The foundation wanted to address the severe nursing shortage that existed before the pandemic and that was compounded when emergency rooms were overflowing with coronavirus patients, particularly at so-called safety net hospitals like St. Barnabas that typically have large numbers of patients who are on Medicaid or are uninsured.
The foundation targeted its grants to hard-pressed hospitals that wanted to apply for nursing accreditation programs. It said that St. Barnabas and 12 other institutions, including Calvary Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center, both in the Bronx, would use grant money for programs overseen by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.
“There are no safety nets doing these programs because they’re expensive programs,” Perlstein said. “We can’t compete” with larger hospitals that are affiliated with medical schools “and have the funding to cover programs that should be offered everywhere,” he said.
The hospitals receiving grants will have to undergo a rigorous review by the credentialing center, an independent body, to be certified. “We believe there’s a lot of value in the pursuit of accreditation,” said Anupa Fabian, Mother Cabrini’s chief research officer. That “will help hospitals put structures in place that lead to significant improvements in nurse well-being” — and, ultimately, patient care.
Rebecca Graystone, a senior vice president of the credentialing center, said the grants from Mother Cabrini were the most by a private foundation for safety net organizations in the United States. “The $51 million, we believe, has the ability to absolutely transform care delivery,” she said. “If you don’t have nurses in a hospital whose well-being is taken care of, whose work environment is appropriate, hospitals don’t run. Whatever brings the patient to the front door of an institution, it’s the nursing staff that gets them admitted.”
Msgr. Gregory Mustaciuolo, the chief executive of the foundation, put it more simply: “You can’t have health care without nurses.” Still, he called the grants “a drop in the bucket,” adding that they “will not in any way solve the problem.”
Other foundation officials said that stress and burnout had contributed to the nursing shortage. They cited a statewide study by the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University of Albany, which found that just under half of nurses surveyed reported symptoms of burnout in 2023. The center also found that retirements were not the only factor in staff shortages. Younger nurses were moving on as well: About 15 percent of hospital nurses between 20 and 39 planned to leave their current jobs within 12 months.
Perlstein said the accreditation program at St. Barnabas would involve “shared governance and engagement” with nurses. The program will also provide more possibilities for career development for nurses “who want to be something more or something else,” he said.
Nadine Williamson, a senior vice president of 1199 SEIU, the union that represents nurses at St. Barnabas, called the grant “amazing” and “historic.” Noting that nurses there are among the lowest paid in the city, she added that the accreditation program should help with recruiting and retaining nurses.
“If the nurses feel good, they’re going to give quality health care,” she said, “and the morale of the nurses lifts up the entire team.”
Hospitals across the state are set to receive $51 million to recruit and retain nurses as the state continues to battle a persistent nursing shortage.
The grant money, announced Wednesday by the Midtown-based charitable group Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, will flow to 13 hospitals to address burnout and train new nurses entering the workforce. Hospitals that receive grants can use the funds to pursue certificates deeming them nursing-friendly workplaces, which prioritize clinician and patient safety and professional development, as well as to establish or expand training programs for new graduates.
Local hospitals, including Montefiore Medical Center, St. Barnabas Hospital, Calvary Hospital, St. John’s Riverside Hospital and Catholic Health’s Mercy Hospital on Long Island, are set to receive between $1 and $5 million annually for the next five years, according to the foundation. Grants to all 13 hospitals are expected to support 6,500 nurses statewide who provide medical services to more than 7 million patients.
The funding is targeted to help safety-net hospitals that serve a high proportion of Medicaid patients or individuals without coverage, according to Daniel Frascella, chief programs and grants officer at the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation.
State officials and private foundations have poured money into the state’s nursing workforce to combat the existing shortage, which the state estimates will reach 40,000 by 2030. Experienced nurses left their jobs in droves after the pandemic because of stressful working conditions and inadequate staffing, leaving hospitals with a higher proportion of new grads and mid-career clinicians. In 2023, 50% of the state’s nursing workforce was under the age of 40, indicating that the nursing workforce is getting younger, according to a report released last July by the Center for Health Workforce Studies in Albany.
The new funding aims to help hospitals retain existing nurses and encourage early-career clinicians to stay in the profession long-term. Awardees can use the money to pursue two types of certificates through the American Nursing Credentialing Center, which designate hospitals as workplaces that foster nurse development.
The awards will also support hospitals to create or expand nurse residency programs, which provide mentorship and on-the-job training to early-career clinicians, as well as virtual nursing programs that allow experienced nurses to work remotely so they can guide front-line clinicians and take on their administrative tasks.
The Mother Cabrini Health Foundation was formed in 2018 after the Catholic Diocesan Bishops of New York sold its nonprofit health plan Fidelis to publicly traded insurance company Centene Corp. for $3.75 billion.
May 15, 2025: A previous version of this story inaccurately stated that Cardinal Timothy Dolan founded the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation. The story has been corrected.
