[NYAPRS Enews] TU Profiles OMH Medical Director Lloyd Sederer

[Harvey Rosenthal]

Capitol Profile: Lloyd Sederer

By CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY, Albany Times Union  February 9, 2009

 

Dr. Lloyd I. Sederer

Medical director, state Office of Mental Health

63, Manhattan

 

Personal: Married to Rosanne Haggerty, president of Common Ground. He
has a son, Max Sederer, and stepson, Aiden Redmond.

 

Hobbies: Travel, reading, cooking, writing and going to the movies

 

What he does: As the state's chief psychiatrist, he is responsible for
quality of care at the department's 26 hospitals, 2 research institutes,
60 outpatient clinics and 2,500 licensed programs throughout the state.

 

How he got there: Graduated from City College of New York and received
his medical degree from SUNY Upstate Medical Center. Director of
inpatient psychiatric care at Massachusetts General Hospital, 1976-1982;
director of outpatient psychiatric services at Mount Auburn Hospital,
Cambridge, Mass., 1982-1989; assistant director and medical director of
McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., 1989-2000; director of clinical
services for the American Psychiatric Association, 2002; and most
recently was executive deputy commissioner for mental health in New York
City, 2002-2007.

 

What was your experience like in New York City?

"One person said that effectively I had 8.2 million patients because
everybody in New York City is crazy. It was fantastic. It was my first
government job and I learned there that government can work and that was
addictive."

 

What was your biggest success in New York City?

"We said that we were going to use the city health and mental hygiene
agency to establish depression screening in 100 percent of primary care
practices in New York City. We went from 0 to 20 percent by the time I
left and it will grow from there."

 

What does OMH do well?

"New York has got some room to get better. There's much too much
fragmentation, there's not enough accountability, there's not enough
provision of evidence-based practices, which is what the science tells
us works. Closing the gap between what we know and what we are capable
of doing is my job as I see it."

 

What are you going to do?

"Commissioner (Michael) Hogan and Commissioner (Karen) Carpenter-Palumbo
got together and said there's fragmentation between mental health and
substance abuse. Those conditions tend to occur together. We are going
to transform these systems so that a person that has got both conditions
no matter where they show up : no wrong door, they are screened,
diagnosed and treated for both conditions. And, we are doing that in
1,200 clinics throughout the state. In the fragmentation between mental
health and health, we've said we are going to use our own system of care
as the first place we'll fix it. So, on Jan. 20, all our 60 outpatient
clinics began the process of collecting and monitoring key health
indicators: blood pressure, BMI (body mass index) and smoking status,
the three key predictors of wellness and sickness and where you can
intervene and make a difference."

 

Your resume is 14 pages long with 160 articles and 7 books. Where do you
find the time?

"I can't help myself. I grew up in a poor small family with a family
business and you were either in school or you worked. I don't think I
ever got that out of my system."

 

You have been chosen as a scholar-in-residence at the Bellagio. What is
that?

"That's not the gaming casino in Las Vegas. The Rockefeller Foundation
has an estate in Italy and a couple times a year they invite a group of
15 or 20 people to go there and work. My wife and I were encouraged to
apply and we won an invitation. We pay our own way there, but they feed
and house you and you get to work in a pretty phenomenal place. It's 30
days."

 

What will you work on?

"I've started another book which will be about how to navigate the
mental health system, especially for families."

 

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=768255&category=REGIO
N 

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