Like most people across the country, Antonio Martin dislikes mediocrity, which is often defined as second-rate, neither good nor bad.

"You can't be the best by being mediocre," was the way the executive director and senior vice president of Kings County Hospital Center/Central Brooklyn Family Health Network put it. "I don't want to be mediocre. I want to be the best. We don't accept mediocrity."

Eighteen months after he became head of the 600-plus bed sprawling modern facility with some of the most sophisticated medical equipment in the City, Martin and his administrative, medical and nursing professionals and support personnel believe they are well on their way to achieving their goals, their vision.

"My vision is for Kings County to be the hospital of choice, not simply in Brooklyn, but in New York," he stated in his relatively modest office. "We have a beautiful edifice and campus, with modern equipment and my focus is working with staff around the issue of respect—respect for one another, respect for our patients, and respect for our community."

Interestingly enough, the "respect" he routinely spoke about involved quite a lot of Caribbean immigrants in more ways than one.

For instance, more than 50 percent of the patients who walk through the entrance of the emergency room at Kings County are Caribbean immigrants; 20-25 percent are from Haiti alone. Secondly, the accents heard in the lobby, along the corridors, in the offices and the patient rooms reflect the diversity of the Caribbean islands and coastal states.

Walk along the busy Clarkson Avenue thoroughfare in front of the hospital buildings, and the ethnic mix—whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and others—of the City and heavy West Indian presence are clear.

But how are the achievements, especially services to the patients being measured?

The answer is important because when Martin returned to the health care facility in February 2009, it was still under intense national and indeed international scrutiny because of the tragic death of a Jamaican mother who was turned to the hospital for treatment for depression less than three years ago but died on the floor without receiving care.

"Great institutions become great when everyone is valued and people feel part of the solution process within the organization," he said. "The way you become a hospital of choice is where the employees feel valued, respected and empowered to come up with solutions for the organization."

In concrete terms, Kings County has slashed the time it takes for a patient to walk through the door of the emergency room until he or she sees a doctor. From TRIAGE to the presence of a physician, the waiting time has gone from about two hours to less than 30 minutes.

"That was an accomplishment that was realized by all levels of staff working together in a very organized process to come up with solutions for the organization," he explained.

Next was the emphasis on quality, he insisted.

"We looked at all of the qualitative indicators, everything from treating depression, asthma, diabetes, chronic heart failure and other health care problems and we set up goals for our staff for achieving very high marks when it came to good patient outcomes and all of those different disease entities," said Martin, the grandson of Jamaicans who went to Panama around the turn of the 20th century to help build the world famous canal. "Our patients and the broader community can go on our website and see how we do in treating diabetes, pneumonia and other health problem. I dare say we do better than most hospitals in the City."

He based that assertion on the results of ongoing independent evaluations which measure patient satisfaction, beginning 24-48 hours after they have left the hospital. Patients are asked about the attitude and respect shown by nurses and doctors; the cleanliness of the room; noise levels at night; the clarity of discharge instructions; and the relief of pain. Just as important, would they recommend Kings County to their relatives and friends, people they care about?

"On the in-patient side, this hospital ranks the best in Brooklyn," said Martin, a veteran of more than 20 years with the Health & Hospitals Corporation, which runs the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States. "We have data that shows that a year ago when you compared that data with other hospitals in Brooklyn we faired the best. Our rate of compliance was somewhere in the mid-70s, meaning that more than 70 percent were very pleased, the top in Brooklyn. I would like to see that in the 90th percentile."

The executive director, who was the chief operating officer and later chief executive of the 261-bed Queens Hospital Center, engineered a top to bottom shake-up of Kings County Hospital leadership.

"I have changed senior leadership in almost three-fourths of management positions that were here," he pointed out. "I have brought in people who are like-minded and with a similar vision. We have recruited and replaced a number of our clinical leadership."

That brings us back to the incident with the Jamaican mother.

Although he denied that the systematic house-cleaning was in response to the woman's death, he has vowed that it wouldn't happen again.

"I am aware of the pain that the organization felt when that tragedy occurred because one horrific incident really marred all the good work that had been done here," he said. "It overshadowed everything that had been done well in this facility.

"We will never forget it and the level of complacency that existed would never resurface here again."