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The mystery became clear when hospital officials dedicated the room to Dr. Scifo, a beloved private practitioner and medical director of St. Vincent’s MultiSpecialty Group, which oversees the Main Street site.
“I, honest to God, had no idea,” a teary-eyed Scifo told about 50 friends, family and patients gathered to celebrate the honor. “When I walked in and saw my family, I said … OK?”
Dianne Auger, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at St. Vincent’s Health Services, said choosing the name for the Community Education Center was simple. The facility, which will offer lectures, presentations and even healthy cooking classes, has been a dream of Scifo’s.
Someone came up with the name “Frankie’s Place,” she joked.
“We weren’t so sure,” she said. “That sounded kind of like a bar.”
Instead the room was christened The Francis R. Scifo, M.D., Community Education Room. A plaque placed on the wall lauds Scifo as a “physician, friend and icon,” noting he personifies the hospital system’s mission.
“He really is the face, voice and heart of St. Vincent’s,” Auger said.
Scifo was a family practitioner for 22 years in Stratford. In 2008, he was named primary care development director at St. Vincent’s Hospital and he took his current post in 2012. The Trumbull resident also serves as medical director of Urgent Care Medicine and is an assistant professor at the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University.
He has served as medical director of Stratford-based Lord Chamberlain Nursing Facility and Rehabilitation Center since 1996. Since 1993, he has been the host of “St Vincent’s Health Talk,” a weekly radio call-in show on WICC-AM 600 in Bridgeport.
Scifo has also co-chaired St. Vincent’s SWIM Across the Sound since 2000, helping to raise millions of dollars in the fight against cancer.
“This is such an honor,” he said. “I’m humbled. This is very special.”
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