Dr. Sandra Scott knew she wanted to be a medical doctor when she was only six years old. She grew up in the state of Louisiana and says that, from a young age, she understood that there was a power and a joy in being a medical doctor and being able to help a patient learn about their body and find ways to improve their health.
“I was accepted into medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas,” Scott reminisced. “I did my emergency medicine residency training at Boston Medical Center, and then I decided I really wanted to live in California…I wanted to live in Northern California.”
The opportunity to hike by the coast and up mountain trails, and visions of doing wilderness medicine seemed exciting, but before she could make that move across the country, Scott decided to accept an emergency medicine posting in New York City.
That first post was at Kings County Hospital. “And this was back in the late ’90s when…there was a lot more crime, particularly in the central Brooklyn area,” Scott said.
Working with patients who were experiencing trauma and trying to survive inner-city emergencies was shocking, rough, exhausting work. “But I got the Brooklyn bug, and I got the New York City bug,” Scott said with a shrug, “and I never left.”
For a little over 25 years now, Scott has been practicing medicine while residing in Brooklyn. She has served as chief of service for emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, chair of emergency medicine at Lincoln Medical Center in the South Bronx, and—in 2021—the first woman and first person of color to serve as executive director of Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in that facility’s 100-year history.
In January 2024, Scott was appointed interim chief executive officer of One Brooklyn Health, a new safety net hospital system that combined the financially distressed Brookdale, Interfaith, and Kingsbrook hospitals in 2016 into a network that could serve central and east Brooklyn.
“Part of the concept of forming the safety net system was to create efficiencies, greater access, greater quality by capitalizing on the advantages of bringing the three hospitals together,” Scott told the AmNews. “In some circumstances, we would consolidate services and therefore reduce costs, but still be able to provide high-quality healthcare to the little over a million people [who] are in our catchment area.”
After beginning her medical career working in the constant high-pressure environment of emergency rooms, Scott has now become a fixture in hospital administrative offices. She said one reason for the change was the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m sure you know how hard-hit this community was in 2020. I used to say that I felt like I was walking through the valley of death. In addition to managing the emergency department, I was also privy to the decisions that were made about where the COVID vaccines would go, who got access to medications for COVID when they became available, who had the resources of PPEs [Personal Protective Equipment] and ventilators. There were a lot of decisions made around tables about the distribution of resources that support health and healing, and I really understood how important it is for us to have diversity and different perspectives around those tables when making decisions about the healthcare of communities.
“I had an epiphany—‘I think something else is coming for me’—and I had to make a decision about whether I was going to continue to primarily practice medicine and be a clinician leader in a clinical department, or if I was going to step up and be a part of management and administration and policy and resource distribution. That was a pivotal moment for me.”
Scott is still the interim CEO at One Brooklyn Health, and she wants to apply to make the position permanent. Even from her administrative desk, she can practice the joys of medicine and healing, but is now in a more powerful position to make a difference in people’s lives by making resources available for diagnosing illnesses and giving patients “more leverage when they’re interfacing with the healthcare system.”
According to Scott, “The people who work at One Brooklyn Health, myself included, are dedicated to serving the population—we could work in places where the financial structure is easier, where the population has less chronic disease, right? This type of healthcare delivery requires a special population of healthcare workers who really are dedicated to the mission of closing health inequities and supporting populations that have been disenfranchised for many, many years. My culture––the culture that I am continuing to promote––is one of service, and making sure that we bring the joy back to the practice of medicine and the joy back to the service of medicine, because COVID was a hard slap in the face. A lot of people have left the healthcare industry because it was traumatizing and a very difficult experience to live through. That’s why I think the work of emphasizing the joy of healing—the joy of being one with the communities that we serve—will one day make us able to actually see remarkable outcomes with all of the local and national efforts to close the healthcare gaps and inequities that exist, not only in New York City, but across the country.”