Fox Facilities Study May Turn Double Rooms To Singles

On National Hospital Week, Remillard Lists Benefits Of Affiliation

By JIM KEVLIN

Fox Hospital – the main hospital and facilities around Oneonta – will be meeting the 21st century in the next few months.
In collaboration with Bassett Healthcare – the two organizations affiliated 18 months ago – an architect will be selected and work will begin on a master facility plan, Fox President/CEO John Remillard said in an interview to mark National Hospital Week, May 16-22.
“We need to modernize certain parts of the hospital,” he said.  “This is the first step.”
A prime area of focus, said the executive, is that most of Fox’s 100 certified beds are in double rooms, and the idea would be to create singles.  “There are a whole host of reasons to do that,” he said, including privacy, limiting infection and accommodating patients’ families.
In a wide-ranging discussion, Remillard expressed satisfaction that the collaboration of Fox and the Bassett system have improved offerings to local patients and put the Oneonta hospital in a stronger position as it faces the future.
In cancer treatment, for instance: With the retirement of Fox’s oncologist, Bassett doctors Yoshiro Matsuo and James Leonardo, and nurse practitioner Patty Jacob opened a branch of the Bassett Cancer Institute at the FoxCare Center on Route 7, providing radiation and chemotherapy under the same roof.  Dr. Timothy Campbell, Bassett Hospital’s chief of Radiation Oncology, is also seeing patients locally.
In orthopedics, a husband and wife team, surgeons Tally Lassiter Jr. and Jocelyn Wittstein, were recruited out of Duke University Hospital, joining Drs. James Elting, Michael Diaz and Richard Sternberg in offering treatment at FoxCare.  Previously, an orthopedic doctor from the Binghamton area had been serving Fox patients parttime.
With Baby Boomers aging and the amount of athletics at the local colleges, this – hip and shoulder replacements, as well as broken bones – this is becoming a particularly critical specialty.
“This would have been very difficult for us to do by ourselves,” said Remillard, “because of the tremendous challenges of physician recruitment.”
While Fox, a century-old institution, had sought for years to maintain its independence, Remillard said the hospital trustees could see that, with health-care reform coming, affiliating with its larger Cooperstown-based neighbor put the Oneonta hospital in “a much better position” to face the challenges ahead.
In providing health coverage for “50 million people who don’t have it,” payments to doctors and hospitals will have to be cut at some point.  “That’s the simple story,” Remillard said.  “We will be treating more people, but we will be paid less.”
The model of the future is “Accountable Care Organizations,” which will receive lump-sum payments that can be spent more cost-effectively in a larger entity – the federal government defines an ACO as serving at least 5,000 patients a year.
The public sometimes forgets, Remillard said at another point, what a “huge engine for the local economy” Fox is.  Employing 950 people, it is routinely one of the top three local employers.  Bassett is always first, and Fox and SUNY Oneonta go back and forth on second and third.
“People don’t realize how much staff it takes to staff a 24-7 operation,” he said.
Remillard, a native of Peru, near Plattsburgh, came to Fox via Lemoyne – he majored in accounting; he later received a master’s in health-care administration at Sage College – and the state Health Department.
“Hospital work is noble work,” he said, describing what drew him to his career.  “You get to do something very good for the community.”
Yes, there are problems and complaints, “but I get a lot more letters from people thanking me for the kind care they received here.  It’s a privilege to be part of the team of people who work here.”
The next afternoon, the executive planned to present the annual Susan Remillard Awards, scholarships to nursing students in honor of his late wife, who came down with cancer soon after the family arrived in the city 22 years ago and passed away at age 39.