Scarpino: “Care will be governed locally…”
KINGSTON — “Try not to think about the buildings, forget about
the bricks and mortar,” Health Alliance president David Scarpino
told the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. His morning address
discussed the future of the HAHV, which owns Kingston and Benedictine
Hospitals.
Westchester Medical Center is accepting HAHV under their umbrella,
Scarpino said. “It’s not an acquisition. This is an affiliation
where the Westchester will have a board, more likely than not, that will
have some authority and control and some powers over the Health Alliance
Board,” he said.
“So the Health Alliance Board will still be intact; it will be driving
many of the decisions we make on a regular basis, the executives of the
hospital will run it,” Scarpino said. “Care will be governed
locally but coordinated within a greater region,” he said.
Some partnership delays with Westchester have occurred, due to DSRIP bureaucracy,
Delivery System Reform Incentive Payments, which is the newfangled state
funding mechanism designed to slim down costs.
“We were supposed to be done with a letter of intent by March 31st,
or thereabouts; we thought we were going to be finished,” Scarpino
said. “Westchester asked for an extension on that, because there
was so much going on,” he added. “Things are moving along
very briskly.”
Saint Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie was acquired by Westchester Medical
Center last spring, which bogged the group down in red tape. It is now
called MidHudson Regional Hospital.
Future DSRIP grant applications, submitted through Westchester, will help
fund the closure of Kingston Hospital campus on Broadway, and build entirely
new emergency room, intensive care unit, and maternity ward on the Benedictine
campus at Mary’s Avenue. The entire building will be completely
renovated, and transplant services will be added, Scarpino said.
“Forget about what happens to this campus or that campus,”
Scarpino said. “It’s really how do we together, in a collaborative
process, each and every one of us who provides care in this community,
do it in a way that we truly make outcomes better,” he said.
The financially struggling hospital group has no choice. Strict state
rules require one of the hospitals to close, and federal regulators are
downsizing the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement scheme. “We’re
going to be measured in our future based on doing better, not more,”
Scarpino noted. “This is the corner we have to turn in health care.”
Community partnerships, public outreach, strategic alliances, and preventive
medicine will accomplish the task of lowering the overall cost of care,
Scarpino said. “The hospital for a very long time has really been
a building that’s standing there, and the people come to it when
they need it. We’re trying to change that perception,” Scarpino
said.
