VIDEO: Vassar Brothers, MidHudson go head to head

Vassar Brothers Medical Center is not just putting up a huge new building, it's ratcheting up its range of specialties to offer more services to patients, its leaders say.

But there are also signs that the moves reflect an underlying competition that began when another big hospital outfit — Westchester Medical Center — came to town and took over a struggling hospital.

Robert Friedberg, president of Vassar Brothers, Wednesday showed a list of 69 specialties that are handled at the City of Poughkeepsie hospital and said they're not resting.

"It is a place for sophisticated medical care," he told about 300 invited guests at the hospital's annual breakfast update, held at the Grandview, a short distance from the campus that will see a $466 million project to replace the existing 294 beds, targeted to open in 2019.

The day revealed a couple of skirmishes that show how the two big hospital groups are in competition in Poughkeepsie. That's Health Quest, parent of Vassar Brothers, and Westchester Medical Center, which took over the former Saint Francis Hospital last year and named it MidHudson Regional Hospital.

One head-to-head is on trauma centers. MidHudson has that now; Vassar Brothers is applying for it. The other sign of rivalry came with news that a few doctors had left Vassar Brothers for MidHudson.

Friedberg said his hospital has begun the quest for trauma designation, a step beyond the emergency care function already in place, seeking certification as a Level II trauma center. That request that has been made to the state Department of Health and would also require acceptance by the American College of Surgeons.

There is already a Level II trauma center at MidHudson Regional Hospital of Westchester Medical Center, in the Town of Poughkeepsie.

Friedberg said Vassar Brothers already gets a third of the trauma cases coming into Poughkeepsie and wants to be able to serve them better. He said there are lots of capabilities available in the hospital that could be leveraged, but the missing piece is specialist trauma surgeons.

Meanwhile, MidHudson Regional continues its reinvigoration effort after emerging from bankruptcy about a year ago, a process that began with Vassar Brothers offering a rescue plan to the Bankruptcy Court. The judge pressed for other offers and Westchester stepped in. State officials then raised the issue of competition, saying that it would suffer if Health Quest wound up with both Poughkeepsie hospitals.

The other issue involves several doctors moving from Vassar Brothers to MidHudson a few weeks ago.

Friedberg mentioned this at the breakfast. "There is an effort to move physicians," he said, and along with that comes the effect of having some patients move over. He declined to speculate why. But he said Vassar is doing well recruiting physicians.

The three doctors who left were hospitalists who are with Mount Kisco Medical Group, according to Dr. Scott Hayworth, CEO of that group. These are doctors who work inside the hospital, caring for all patients including those admitted by their own family or general practice physicians.

The doctors were formerly part of the Mid Hudson Medical Group, Hayworth said. All of that group's doctors left it after that group became embroiled in a major controversy involving medical malpractice suits against one of its physicians, Dr. Spyros Panos. Those doctors then all affiliated with Mount Kisco.

Hayworth said all those patients of the doctors who moved still have full choice.

"Every doctor can admit a patient to either hospital," he said. The doctors themselves decided they wanted to be affiliated with MidHudson, he said.

The loss of a few hospitalists put a dent in the staff, Vassar's Friedberg said. But there are 17 hospitalists, he said, and recruiting is under way.

Employment at Vassar Brothers hospital has grown by 241 in the past year and there are plans to add more as services increase, Friedberg said. That would add more jobs in coming years.

The plans include building out various subspecialties to bring new procedures and care.

Upgrades are in the works for oncology, which is cancer care, "to really come up with a team approach," said Friedberg. This will combine surgical, radiation and medical approaches including chemotherapy into an "integrated care" model.

At the breakfast, guests applauded the scenes of progress displayed in videos and detailed by physicians.

"I think it's fantastic," said Ira Effron of Poughkeepsie. "I think it's something the community needs."

As part of its development project, Vassar Brothers plans to pay the City of Poughkeepsie a PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes, compensating for taxpaying properties that will be taken off the tax rolls when those lands become part of the expanded campus. That revelation was made at a Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial Board meeting Wednesday by officials of Vassar Brothers and its parent, Health Quest.

An existing PILOT formula established by the city has been forwarded to the hospital. Spokesman Tim Massie said, "We have to work out the numbers."

He also said the hospital donated to the city a parking fee collection system that was removed from the hospital's parking deck and put to use in the city's Financial Plaza Parking Deck off Main Street. In trade, the city's plan is to abandon a section of Livingston Street as a public street. This is where Vassar Brothers has been buying up houses to enlarge space to make room for the new building. That block of Livingston would become part of Vassar Brothers' campus.

Although Vassar Brothers is not proposing to expand its bed count beyond 294, there actually is an effective increase in capacity, said Luke McGuinness, president and CEO of Health Quest.

Going to single-occupancy rooms from the traditional double-occupancy achieves that, he explained. "It gives us 15 percent expanded capacity," he told the Journal, mainly because doubles often wind up as singles because of protocols separating genders and isolating those with infectious diseases.

He said that while it's true that overall hospital capacity need is decreasing, that's not foreseen for the over-65 demographic. "This will allow us to increase capacity for over-65s without adding beds," McGuinness said.

Usage of the hospital increased 5 percent in 2013, 7 percent in 2014 and is on track to hit 10 percent this year, Friedberg said.

Craig Wolf: 845-437-4815; cwolf@poughkeepsiejournal.com; Twitter: @craigwolfPJ