Dr. Herbert Pardes, a psychiatrist and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health who brought order to the merger of two major medical centers that became New York-Presbyterian Hospital and led it for 11 years, died April 30 at his home. in Manhattan. It was 89.
His son Steve said the cause was aortic stenosis.
Dr. Pardes (pronounced par-diss) was named president and CEO of the hospital in late 1999, nearly two years after the merger of New York Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital. In the previous decade, he was dean of the medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeonsaffiliated medical school of Presbyterian.
“It was no secret that as dean of the medical school I didn’t always agree with the hospital administration,” he said in his thick Bronx accent. on CUNY TV in 2011. “I thought maybe I could create a better partnership by going to run the hospital.”
The merger created one of the largest healthcare institutions in the country, with 2,369 hospital beds, 13,000 employees and annual revenue of $1.6 billion. With 167 facilities, it spread from Manhattan to Rockland and Orange counties in New York. Its hospitals include Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.
“It was a surprisingly successful merger, considering the different cultures of the two institutions,” Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group, said in an interview. “He was the bridge that allowed for a smooth and seamless transition of this institution.”
But Alan Sager, a professor of health law at Boston University, without commenting on the New York-Presbyterian merger, said in an email: “Proponents of mergers always say, self-sanctifyingly, that they combine to make us help. not themselves. But if mergers reduced costs (never proven), they would result in larger hospital surpluses – not lower premiums.”
Dr. Pardes aspired to make the New York-Presbyterian model of medical care, with a strong focus on patients, efficient management and rigid financial controls. He visited beds, insisted that nurses memorize the names of patients and their families, and ordered that rooms and lobbies be painted soothing colors.
“I’ve never been able to overcome a problem,” he was quoted as saying in a New York Times profile of him in 2007. “I’ve got to fix it. This profession is about helping patients survive first — always has been. Unfortunately, I think we can lose that sometimes.”
Mr. Raske said, “Herb faced life’s problems with a childlike smile and a touch of borscht humor.”
Dr. Pardes was a prodigious fundraiser for New York-Presbyterian, helping secure donations from the wealthy to build facilities such as Morgan Stanley Children’s HospitalThe Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Centerand Iris Cantor Men’s and Female Health Centers, all in Manhattan.
“He had a way of associating with people of great power and getting them to make huge gifts,” Steve Pardes said.
Herbert Pardes was born on July 7, 1934 in the Bronx and grew up mostly in Lakewood, NJ His parents, Louis and Frances (Bergman) Pardes, owned the Hotel Greenwood in Lakewood, which was converted into a nursing home in the late 1950s. and managed resorts in the Catskills beltway.
At age 7, Herbert was diagnosed with Perthes disease, a rare childhood disease in which the blood supply to the ball of the hip joint is temporarily cut off, weakening the bone. Although he recovered without any permanent damage, he spent 10 months in hospital in a cast. Grim doctors stuck needles in him without explanation, and hospital rules limited his parents’ visits to just one hour, a few times a week, he recalls. The experience scarred him but, decades later, helped him to be more considerate of patients.
As a youth he worked for his parents, observing how they treated resort guests. He sold soft drinks for 10 cents, raised money for the war effort, rang the bell, waited tables and went up to the maître d’hôtel.
“The dining room was a microcosm of eccentric behavior, an excellent behavioral laboratory for someone who would become a psychiatrist,” Dr. Pardes told the Times in 2003.
He graduated from Rutgers University in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree and then earned his medical degree in 1960 from SUNY Downstate College of Medicine (now SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University) in Brooklyn. He served his medical practice and psychiatric residency at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn from 1960 to 1962.
After enlisting in the army, Dr. Pardes directed the mental hygiene clinic at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va., from 1962 to 1964. He was discharged and completed his residency in 1966, then graduated from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1970.
For most of the next two decades he built his career around mental health as chairman of the department of psychiatry at Downstate, chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver, and director of NIMH, where he strengthened its research program.
In 1984, Dr. Pardes was appointed director of the psychiatric service at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and chairman of the department of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Five years later, he was named the college’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the medical school, placing him at the helm of New York-Presbyterian Hospital after the merger.
In addition to his son Steve, he is survived by two other sons, James and Lawrence, six grandchildren and his partner, Dr. Nancy Wexler, a professor of neuropsychology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons who was the lead investigator for a study of Huntington’s disease of an extended family in Venezuela over two decades. She has the disease herself. He had been separated from his wife, Judith (Silber) Pardes, since the 1980s. She died in 2022.
Dr. Pardes was a well-paid nonprofit executive even after stepping down as president and CEO in 2011. He was later named executive vice chairman of the hospital’s board, a position that compensation experts said was rare in the nonprofit. for-profit world, according to a 2014 Times article.
In 2011, his last year running the hospital, he earned $4.1 million (equivalent to about $5.8 million today). Then, as executive vice president, he received $5.5 million, including $2 million in deferred compensation in 2012. Through 2022, he received at least $2 million annually.
Frank Bennack Jr., then the hospital’s board chairman, told the Times in a statement in 2014 that Dr. Pardes had been retained for “urgent fundraising activities and a number of other institutional needs with which he could assist his outstanding successor.”
Dr. Steven J. Corwin succeeded him and remains in this position.
Steve Pardes said the focus on compensation bothered his father. “When he compared himself to CEOs in profitable businesses, he may have been undercompensated,” Mr. Pardes said. “But he wasn’t focused on the money. He wanted to be paid a fair wage for what he offered.”