Patrick Guy serves on the Board of Trustees for Episcopal Health Services, Inc. (EHS) as Secretary and as part of the Board’s Finance Committee and Quality Committee. He is also a member of the St. John’s ICARE Foundation Advisory Committee. The Foundation, established in 2021, benefits and supports the charitable and educational activities of EHS. Of the Board and the Advisory Committee, Patrick says, “We provide guidance and we’re there to help in whatever way we can with what expertise we have. I think over the last 3 to 4 years we’ve really done lot of good things for the hospital. We can look with pride toward where we’re going in the future.”
Though he grew up in Glendale, Queens, Patrick’s connection to the Rockaway peninsula began with summers spent at Rockaway beaches. During his early basketball playing days he traveled nearly every weekend to the community to play ball at a park on 108th Street. After college Patrick continued with the sport, playing with the Long Island Press League where, “there was always a team or two from the Rockaways, so that gave me another sense of the communities.”
Patrick’s introduction to, and subsequent presence, on EHS’s Board, was twofold. His wife, and the wife of the Right Rev. Lawrence Provenzano (Bishop of Long Island), are friends. Pat, as a congregant of the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, also knows the Bishop. When Bishop Provenzano, who is EHS’s Board President and Chair, heard of Patrick’s retirement, he offered him a place on the Board. In accepting the invitation, Patrick initially felt he could offer some general business advice, but also brings an understanding of the issues and challenges related to healthcare. “My wife is a nurse, whose career spanned several hospitals, including LIJ [Long Island Jewish Medical Center, part of the Northwell Health system], NYU and South Nassau. There’s been plenty of conversations related to hospitals, from medical care to billing, so I got a little bit of what happened in a hospital setting. An inside view to what she did and what took place.”
Until his retirement about eight years ago, Patrick spent 35 years as an in-house entertainment lawyer. For 10 of those years, he was a principal sports lawyer at CBS. He spent 11 years with Lifetime Television as general counsel and 14 years at Scripps Networks as head of business affairs for the Food Network, HGTV and the Travel Channel. Since retiring, Patrick has established his own practice, which represents about six or 7 production companies.
With his involvement on the EHS Board these past eight years, Patrick believes it, and St. John’s, have grown dramatically, saying, “I think the hospital has positioned itself smartly to be able to deliver on its mission to the people of the Rockaways. We have managed to establish relationships with the appropriate personnel in New York State to help us on the financial side. We have managed to garner grants that enabled us to make some very significant changes to the physical plant of the hospital.” Some of these changes include upgrades to the ICU and additional hospital infrastructure. Plans are currently in the works to secure funding for an OB-GYN upgrade.
Patrick stresses that St. John’s, as a “safety net” hospital, serves a clientele needing a lot of care, particularly high maintenance care, so “you really need a lot of these areas to be on the cutting edge, or pretty close to it. I think we positioned ourselves in such a way that we will be able to move forward even as an independent facility in our current capacity and will continue to offer high quality medical services to the Rockaways. That’s what I find most exciting.” He’s confident that the hospital will continue delivering on its promise of serving the healthcare needs of the communities of the Rockaway peninsula.
A resident of Garden City for 37 years, Patrick and his wife currently live in Franklin Square. They are the parents of two grown children.
