Scarpino: “… working with informed community leaders”
SAUGERTIES – Over 100 people filled the community room at the Senior
Center in Saugerties Monday night to attend a regional forum about affordable
healthcare, organized by activist group Indivisible.
Keynote speaker was David Scarpino, president and CEO of HealthAlliance
of the Hudson Valley, which owns three local hospitals. His hourlong discussion
covered a wide variety of issues, including the new medical village in
Kingston and affiliation with the Westchester Medical Center Health Network,
plus controversies surrounding Blue Cross and the Medicare reimbursement
rate.
Scarpino, who was warmly received by the crowd, took over as leader of
HealthAlliance in 2013, after serving as chief financial officer since
2009. His remarks reflected a 48-year career in the field, which he said
began at age 16.
During his tenure as president, HAHV has navigated through complicated
mergers, consolidations, and institutional realignments, culminating with
an ambitious $133.6 million redevelopment proposal for the Mary’s
Avenue Campus, formerly known as Benedictine Hospital, and the Broadway
Campus, formerly Kingston Hospital. The deal represents one of the largest
investment projects in city history.
HealthAlliance plans to construct a new 110,000-square-foot wing and tower
at its Mary’s Avenue Campus and renovate and remodel an additional
70,000 square feet of the campus. Construction is expected to be completed
about two years after it starts, Scarpino told the audience. The hospital
is waiting for approval from the state Department of Health before it
starts construction.
The Broadway Campus will be turned into the medical village, a regional
health and quality-of-life hub providing primary and behavioral-health
care, along with conventional and integrative health and human services.
That work is expected to start about midway through the Mary’s Avenue
Campus construction.
Scarpino said he supports the medical village idea so deeply that HealthAlliance
plans to launch a virtual pilot model, with community members helping
to decide how best the hospital can meet community health and human service
needs.
“The most important piece is, we will be working with informal community
leaders,” he said. “We will bring in groups to talk about
how they can help us improve their care, access and quality of life.”
O+, the local arts festival that lets artists exchange their contributions
to festival programming for free health and wellness services, will be
involved, as will faith groups and the immigrant community. “When
you start to have conversations with those leaders in their communities,
they are the ones that can get people to come to us,” Scarpino said.
The hospital leader said the system is here “to improve the quality
of health in our community, number one. And also, to make sure there is
access to quality providers in the community.”
Keeping people out of the hospital, while counterintuitive, is a major
institutional goal, Scarpino maintained. This concept dovetails with the
problem of limited funding and overall cost reduction. Central to such
discussions is the Medicare reimbursement rate, which is significantly
lower in Ulster County than in Dutchess and all other counties south to
Staten Island, Scarpino said.
The lower reimbursement rate means HealthAlliance often can’t afford
salaries as high as those of hospitals in neighboring counties, Scarpino
said.
A nurse working at HealthAlliance can make $12 to $20 an hour more by
moving across the river, Scarpino said, adding that trainees often move
on after cutting their teeth at HealthAlliance.
Ulster County Legislator Chris Allen from Saugerties spoke of his efforts
to lobby for an equalization of reimbursement rates, describing conversations
he held with newly elected U.S. Rep. John Faso. The Republican congressman
from Kinderhook told Allen of similar concerns elsewhere in the district.
Scarpino described the problem as political in nature and said he would
strive to keep his own toes out of the political waters. He also remarked
that 70 percent of his hospital’s funding came from the state and
federal governments.
The dispute between HealthAlliance and Empire BlueCross BlueShield was
briefly addressed. Scarpino attributed the impasse to the insurance provider’s
breach of agreements made with Westchester Medical Center prior to HealthAlliance
falling under the WMCHealth umbrella. Civil service employees and retirees
are left without coverage at their local hospital except for emergencies,
and the matter remains in litigation.
