Ophthalmologist Dr. Patrick Costello removes cataracts, performs laser eye surgery and does cosmetic eyelid procedures at the free-standing Griffiss Eye Surgery Center in Rome.
Amy Neff Roth
Ophthalmologist Dr. Patrick Costello removes cataracts, performs laser eye surgery and does cosmetic eyelid procedures at the free-standing Griffiss Eye Surgery Center in Rome.
He said the center, which opened about three years ago, offers patients cheaper, faster and more convenient care than a hospital.
“Everyone is highly specialized,” he explained. “Typically, I can do two-and-a-half times as many cases at the surgery center in the same amount of time. And I’m not operating any faster. It’s the turnover of the room and the efficiency.”
His center is not alone. Two more local ambulatory surgery centers are in the works: an orthopedic, plastic and pain surgery center in Westmoreland and another for pain management in either Utica or Kirkland.
The facilities are just the latest step in a decades-old march of services moving away from hospitals into community settings, whether that be an X-ray machine in an orthopedic surgeon’s office, chemotherapy in a doctor’s office or stitches in an urgent care center.
The availability of so many services in the community raises the question: Do we still need hospitals?
Anyone who’s ever had a heart attack knows the answer is yes — but not necessarily hospitals as we know them today.
“I think to a large extent if you say hospital, it is still the brick building that care goes on in (that people think of),” said Dr. John McCabe, CEO of Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse. “But the nature of that care is changing, and I think more and more, you’re seeing movement from the hospital to a care system.”
Growing competition for patients in money-making services, falling reimbursements for the services hospitals do provide and health care reform are pushing hospitals to change what they do, where they do it and how they do it.
Consumers |in the middle
After the opening of the Griffiss Eye Surgery Center, the Mohawk Valley Health System – made up of St. Elizabeth Medical Center and Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare – lost an estimated $11.4 million in profits between 2011 and 2013, officials estimate.
“It’s a lot of revenue that the hospital has lost and it’s a lot of profit,” said health system President and CEO Scott Perra.
That makes it harder, he said, for hospitals to offer another vital service to the community – access.
“The major difference between a medical office and a hospital is access,” said Dennis Whalen, president of the Hospital Association of New York State. “The hospital is open 24/7, 365 days a year. Anybody who walks into a hospital is required under the law to be treated, regardless of their ability to pay.”
