Dr. Jay B. Adlersberg wants better care for rheumatology patients
Millions of residents in the tristate area recognize Dr. Jay B. Adlersberg from his longtime position as the medical correspondent for WABC-TV’s Eyewitness News. For 30 years, he’s reported nightly on advances in the art and science of medicine. As an award-winning journalist and renowned rheumatologist and internist, Adlersberg provided his audience with well-explained insight on how scientific research relates to patients.
Now, Adlersberg is bringing that same commitment to patient care to New York Health.
NY Health is a new, but rapidly growing network of independent board certified physicians with facilities in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, Nassau County and Suffolk County. Its specialties range from nephrology to urology, complemented with physical therapy. Through its parent company, New York Cancer Blood, NY Health has robust infusion centers that not only allow for advanced cancer treatments, but also allow Adlersberg to treat rheumatology patients in one place in less time.
Adlersberg, who has 45 years of experience treating the most severe forms of arthritis and joint disease, often employs intravenously-administered biologic medications like Humira to help patients achieve remission for debilitating conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. These drugs cannot be taken orally, and require patients to go to infusion centers for treatment. Prior to joining NY Health, Adlersberg would have to send patients to facilities outside his office to receive these life-changing infusions.
“Joining NY Health was a no-brainer for me,” Adlersberg said. “Previously, I was sending patients to a different place for these infusions and if someone had a reaction to the drug, I couldn’t see it. I would have to depend on nurses to describe it to me because I couldn’t get to the place of infusion. Now, I have an office that is 40 feet away from the infusion center. If someone does have a reaction, I can walk right over and look and talk to the patient. That is the way I want to practice medicine, now I have a hand in everything that happens.”
Adlersberg’s new position at NY Health allows for a better, more personalized patient experience. Patients can now receive their infusions in one place in less than 90 minutes.
“Previously, it would take three hours,” Adlerberg said. “They would have to sign in, and sign in a second time. It was a lot more paperwork and a lot more time consuming. Now, they can do it on a lunch hour if they wanted to. They will save so much time.”
Adlersberg, brings a robust resume to NY Health. Aside from his award-winning reporting for WABC-TV’s Eyewitness News, Adlersberg serves on the board of the New York chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. Educated at the University of Pittsburgh, where he graduated junior year Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, he went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the nation’s oldest medical school and one of its most prestigious.
He completed a coveted residency at the country’s most respected city hospital and training ground for clinical medicine, the Bellevue Hospital Center of NYU Langone Medical Center. Adlersberg did his fellowship in rheumatology and immunology as an NIH-Postdoctoral Fellow at the Irvington House Institute of NYU Medical Center under the guidance of the late Dr. Edward C. Franklin, a world-renowned immunologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Adlersberg, whose main interests are rheumatoid arthritis, the arthritis of psoriasis, back pain and autoimmune disorders, has been a forefront of intravenously administering biologic medications to treat his patient for two decades.
“These drugs don’t just treat the disease,” Adlersberg said. “They can essentially make it go away. I have been using them to treat patients for 20 years. One woman went from gaining 30 pounds because she couldn’t go to the gym since her knees and ankles were so swollen and painful to going back to wearing high heels after four months of treatment.”
Dr. Rohit Reejsinghani, executive director of NY Health, said the addition of Adlersberg is part of NY Health’s commitment to creating a patient-centric model of care, through better connecting patients with their doctors for more personalized attention.
“Dr. Adlersberg is one of the most respected rheumatologists in the country,” Reejsinghani said. “He invented the infusion game and because of that I said we need to have him on board. Our infusions centers are built within our cancer offices so having Dr. Adlersberg allows us to treat a different patient population within these state-of-the-art infusion centers. Bringing him on board will bring NY Health to the next frontier.”
