Brooklyn's Progress
August 2003

By Lutheran Medical Center

Lutheran Medical Center (LMC) was recently awarded a $25,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation for the expansion of information technology services throughout the healthcare system.  Technology has changed the way the world deals with information and the healthcare industry has been able to streamline its processes and focus on improved access for its patients and community through technological advances.

For more than 120 years, Lutheran HealthCare has provided clinically excellent and culturally competent care to the ever-changing communities of Southwest Brooklyn, including Sunset Park, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge and Park Slope.  Lutheran Medical Center is the winner of the American Hospital Association’s first Foster G. McGaw Award for community service. 

The 476-bed teaching hospital and its network of more than 40 primary care sites, organized under the Lutheran Family Health Centers, provides a full spectrum of emergency, trauma, acute, rehabilitative and ambulatory services.  Lutheran Medical Center furthers its mission through two wholly owned affiliates:  Lutheran Augustana Center for Extended Care and Rehabilitation, a 240-bed skilled nursing facility and Health Plus, a prepaid health services organization licensed in all the boroughs of New York City with an enrollment of more than 170,000.

Verizon Foundation last year awarded 22,000 grants totaling more than $70 million to nonprofit agencies that focus on improving basic and computer literacy, enriching communities through technology, and creating a skilled workforce.  The Foundation uses its resources in the U.S. and abroad to develop partnerships in technology and connect them with organizations serving the needs of diverse communities, people with disabilities, victims of domestic violence and the economically and socially disadvantaged.  The Foundation also supports Verizon Volunteers, an incentive program that last year encouraged Verizon employees to volunteer more than 500,000 hours in their communities and provided $27.8 million in gifts to nonprofit organizations.  For more information on the Foundation, visit www.verizon.com/foundation.