Expanding the meaning of care at Mary Manning Walsh

Michael Monahan, executive director of Mary Manning Walsh Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, has 35 years of experience working in New York City’s healthcare field.

Starting off as an administrator at Mary Manning, Monahan worked his way up the ladder to the position of executive director. Mentors encouraged him along the way, including Upper East Side resident Jane Rosenthal and Sister Sean William O’Brien.

Monahan met Rosenthal when he was working as the director of environmental services, security, linen and laundry at Menorah Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing Care. Rosenthal was the nursing home’s administrator. Seeing Monahan’s potential, she encouraged him to go back to school to obtain a Licensed Nursing Home Administration certificate. He did. After 15 years of work at Menorah Center, Monahan accepted a position as the administrator at Mary Manning.

At Mary Manning, Monahan was mentored by someone he called “a legend,” former Executive Director Sister Sean, a Carmelite nun and nurse who led Mary Manning from 1997 to 2019.

Since becoming the Executive Director himself, Michael Monahan has helped three new initiatives move forward. One is the Oncology Rehab Program, a partnership between Mary Manning and Memorial Sloan Kettering. The program is the first of its kind, bringing fifteen cancer patients to Mary Manning to receive rehabilitative care. Another new initiative is the Hospital for Special Surgery Unit at Mary Manning, offering orthopedic patients short-stay rehabilitative care.

An additional initiative of Monahan’s was opening the Dawn Greene Hospice at Mary Manning in partnership with Calvary Hospital. Eighteen hospice beds are now available at Mary Manning through this program. When it first began, finding a hospice within a nursing home was unheard of.

While all of these programs started during Mr. Monahan’s tenure as Executive Director, he won’t take full credit for them. “The staff — all grace [and] thanks goes to them,” said Monahan. “Honestly, I rely on them so much. So, [I do] whatever I can do to help them, support them and help the patients.”

The staff of 500 employees is made up of nurses, certified nurse educators, dietitians, nuns, volunteers, and many others. Over the years, the team has received boxes and boxes of thank cards from patients and their families.

Who are the residents at Mary Manning? According to Monahan, “The people that live here and that are cared for here are really just amazing. These are the movers and shakers that created a lot of what has happened in New York City. Teachers, lawyers, actors, politicians — this community is really diverse in a sense of what people do and how they’ve contributed to New York.”