A new era of healthcare is slowly dawning in New York, and many of its city-run hospitals are spending the next four years preparing to shift gears before its event horizon. For NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx in Norwood, that strategy involves the patient experience and its nurses, often deemed the face of most hospitals.

NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx is part of the Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the city’s financially beleaguered hospital network that was once referred to as North Central Bronx Hospital. Making things tougher is cuts in state and federal subsidies by 2020, which could signal further financial turmoil for HHC.

“Health and Hospitals has been kind of strategizing to determine how can we exist and survive beyond the subsidies in 2020,” said Greg Calliste, NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx’s interim executive director.

Under a 16-prong 2020 reform plan, hospital officials place a heavier emphasis on easier access to primary care, knowing it can increase patient satisfaction scores, which lead to better reimbursement rates and improved chances of patient return to NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx.

To implement part of the plan, NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx has enlisted Maureen Pode, a seasoned registered nurse recently promoted to Chief Nursing Operator, to help oversee improved patient care. A nurse with over 30 years, Pode told the Norwood News that her primary goal will require the interpersonal relationship between patient and the 497 nurses within the system.

“Nursing is one of the largest work forces in the hospital, and as such they are most closest to the patient,” said Pode, who’s been with NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx since 2002.

Bode also plans to put more focus in empowering patients to remain on top of their health, noticing it can engage the patient to self-management. “When you have an educated and engaged patient, and their caregivers and family members and their support services engaged, you have a patient who is much better able to manage those diseases effectively in the community.”

Professionally, NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx hopes to achieve what’s called “Magnet status” by the American Nurses’ Credentialing Center, a distinction that it hopes to market to any incoming freshman.

So far, the network has noticed progress in patient satisfaction. Dr. Ram Raju, president of HHC, told an audience at John Jay College in Manhattan recently that in-patient satisfaction has increased by 6 percent since the plan was introduced last year. MetroPlus health care, the insurance program owned by HHC, has also seen a boost in membership. It currently has 1.4 million enrolled, with a goal of 2 million by 2020.

The signs could help change course for HHC, which for several years has struggled to stay fiscally solvent. In July 2014, the network reported losses of $60 million.

A report by the Independent Budget Office indicated that the network could be $1.8 billion in the red by 2018 if it does not change its model.

Its financial struggles are the subject of a forum Feb. 11 at Jacobi Medical Center, another city-owned hospital in the east Bronx.