Editor’s Note: McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care are profiling the McKnight’s 2023 Pinnacle Awards honorees daily in April and May. For additional McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards content, visit this page.
It was 1983 when Yvonne Eaddy joined VNS Health (then known as The Visiting Nurse Service of New York) as a public health nurse visiting the homes of both the elderly and children in need of a lifeline.
Forty years later, she oversees more than 300 clinicians and 35 clinical support team members to coordinate the day-to-day care delivered to patients across Brooklyn and Staten Island, as well as the regional budget that governs them. In addition, Eaddy manages VNS Health’s Maternity-Newborn Pediatrics Program in Brooklyn, which provides care and support for children with complex medical conditions. She also is the program leader for home care behavioral health services.
She was elected an “Unsung Hero” category winner in the 2023 McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program.
In her current role as vice president of regional patient care services for VNS Health since 2001, Eaddy arrived with decades of experience. It ranged from field visits to nurse management, Medicare billing and request processing, and ensuring high-quality and cost-effective patient services were delivered to residents of Manhattan.
For two years, beginning in 1998, she led the agency’s transformation from delivering care with discipline-specific teams to interdisciplinary ones.
Her talent for transformation was also behind a more recent endeavor: launching the company’s Nurse Residency Program in March 2020 to introduce newly graduated nurses to home care and pair them with RN preceptor mentors. The goal has been to give them time to transition from the classroom to home care visits, going from novice to expert, under the tutelage of experienced nurses.
A 1977 graduate of the Hunter College School of Nursing, she earned a master’s degree in nursing from Chamberlain University in 2017. She also won VNS Health’s Leadership 2000 Award and was a finalist in the New York Times’ Tribute to Nurses.
The McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care. Honorees were recognized March 7 at a gala banquet and awards ceremony in Chicago. The program’s Platinum sponsor was MatrixCare. Omnicare was a Silver sponsor, and additional sponsors included Pinnacle Quality Insight, HealthDirect and Sentrics.
