Dr. Jeffrey Fine serves as Vice Chairman of NYU Langone Health Brooklyn Rehabilitation & Rusk Rehabilitation Network Development. He is a clinician educator and administrator who has been practicing in academic medicine at Level I Trauma Center teaching hospitals for over 20 years. Dr. Fine is chairperson of the VBM ICU early mobilization program at NYU Langone Hospital Brooklyn and also chairperson of the Brooklyn brain injury outpatient care planning team. He holds four certifications from the American Board of Medical Specialties in the following areas: Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation; Spinal Cord Injury; Brain Injury Medicine; and Pain Medicine. He also has published several articles regarding patient safety during transitions of care including communication during handoffs, and identification/reconciliation of barriers to safe community discharge with resultant enhanced patient satisfaction. His medical degree is from New York Medical College and he completed his residency at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Among his many prestigious awards, on more than one occasion he was honored as Best Teacher Of The Year in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
In this interview, Dr. Fine discusses the following: kinds of patients he is treating for COVID-19; patient pathways to arrive for treatment; differential susceptibility of patients entering the health care setting on the basis of age, gender, socioeconomic factors, genetic variations and other characteristics, such as preexisting conditions like diabetes; whether accurate predictors are being employed, along with any kinds of measures or rating scales to help distinguish patients who can expect to be discharged to their homes compared to individuals with more life-limiting medical conditions; access to all necessary therapies, including those considered still at an experimental stage of effectiveness; role of telehealth in treating COVID-19; possible impact on daily activities of wearing full-body PPE by clinicians in the hospital; and how as a health professional life may have changed since the appearance of COVID-19.