Northwell Health’s Plainview Hospital dedicated its pavilion to the late executive Debbie Tascone-Kennedy, who was the first female leader to run a hospital in Northwell’s system.
A ceremony was held on Monday, Aug. 25, in the hospital’s lobby, where Northwell Health leaders and members of Tascone-Kennedy’s family gathered.
Tascone-Kennedy held senior executive leadership roles at North Shore-LIJ as vice president and executive director, overseeing both Plainview and Syosset Hospitals during the 1990s and into the early 2000s. She died in 2021 after battling Scleroderma,
Northwell’s president and CEO, Michael Dowling, called Tascone-Kennedy “extraordinary” and spoke about when he first met her.
“When Debbie spoke, everybody listened,” he said. “I remember saying I think we found the leader of the hospital. She loved everybody and everybody loved her.”
As executive leader, Tascone-Kennedy helped guide multiple hospitals through periods of expansion, program development and process improvement.
Dowling said that prior to her appointment as the executive leader in Syosset, the hospital had suffered from instability.
Mark Solazzo, the COO at Northwell Health, called Tascone-Kennedy his friend and said he had worked with her for decades. He said if he had to pick one word to describe Tascone-Kennedy, it was “caregiver.”
“Over and over again, she was the perfect example of a caregiver,” Solazzo said. “Everything I know about that word came from Debbie. “I think Debbie is one of the cornerstones of the culture that we developed here.”
Multiple Northwell leaders called Tascone-Kennedy a caring person, with Dowling saying she once fed rats at the hospital in Valley Stream cheese so that they weren’t hungry.
“Debbie was the kind of person that if you met her once, you knew her for a lifetime,” Maureen White, the chief nurse executive at Northwell, said. “She was the nurse that every patient should have. She would give you the shirt off her back.”
Kerri Scanlon, president of Plainview Hospital, said the pavilion will serve as a lasting tribute to Tascone-Kennedy’s impact and legacy.
Tascone-Kennedy’s daughter spoke after the dedication, saying with emotion that she had grown up at the hospital and with many of its staff.
“This hospital meant the world to her,” she said about her mother.
