such as Columbia Medical? “The difference is that we do probably a lot more than those people do because we’re just very high volume. We each specialize in a small amount of things or fields, and we each do a huge volume of that.” The cohesive nature of NYCSA’s setup also helps alleviate one of the major fears of patients in dealing with medical problems: the bill. A large hospital, while having many different departments and varieties of surgeons, also outsources a lot of its resources, especially private surgeons and equipment. This outsourcing means that the bill is more complicated and leaves the patient caught in the realm of the unknown: can I afford this, and when am I going 56 • Resident • June 2016
to know? The in-house structure of NYCSA means that the costs are immediately transparent and known. “We track every procedure, so when patients come in with their insurance card, I can tell you what I would get paid per procedure, per insurance provider, per what procedure we’re going to need. I can tell them what their out of pocket cost is going to be. And I can guarantee that, because everything is in-house.” Since the areas of focus of the practice are not geared towards lifesaving surgeries and procedures, the desired demographic is not your run of the mill New Yorker. Having expanded to nine offices in New York City, the locations themselves are
representative of the typical patient: with two offices on 60th and Madison and one in Chelsea, the patients tend to belong to more of the upper middle class. Despite this demographic, Dr. Greuner puts a strong emphasis on his refusal to “cherrypick his cases.” Conducting many pro-bono cases, he asserts that the people who he wants to pick for pro-bono are people with real problems. “We don’t just have the average person off the street, and it’s not because we feel we owe them something. We do it because we want to.” For Dr. Greuner charitable work is a big part of what he does when he’s not working. This May he traveled to the Cannes Film Festival for the Generous People Gala which raises funds for The Heart Fund which saves the lives of children