Westchester Medical Center has expanded its regional health network northward with the addition of HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley, a 7-year-old health care system based in Kingston that serves residents of Ulster and Delaware counties.
WMC Health, as the Valhalla hospital”™s growing network is called, will be the sole corporate member of HealthAlliance and will oversee operations at all of the new network member”™s hospital and nursing home facilities in Kingston and Margaretville, said officials of the Westchester County Health Care Corp., the public benefit corporation that operates Westchester Medical Center.
The agreement announced on March 30 makes WMCHealth a 1,900-bed system with 10 hospitals on seven campuses in the Hudson Valley. The deal follows the Valhalla hospital”™s acquisition of the former St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers in Poughkeepsie ”” now MidHudson Regional Hospital of Westchester Medical Center ”” in a bankruptcy proceeding in 2014 and its joint venture partnership in 2015 that made WMC the majority owner of Bon Secours Charity Health System and active manager of the Catholic health system”™s three hospitals in Orange and Rockland counties.
HealthAlliance President and CEO David Scarpino said his organization and WMCHealth plan an “innovative health care delivery system” that will make the HealthAlliance Hospital Mary”™s Avenue Campus in Kingston a single hospital and transform its Broadway Campus into a “medical village” that will “bring a variety of much-needed community ambulatory services under one roof.”
In Margaretville, where HealthAlliance operates Margaretville Hospital and Mountainside Residential Care Center, HealthAlliance will continue to provide critical-access and skilled-nursing services, Scarpino said.
Michael D. Israel, president and CEO of Westchester Medical Center Health Network, said WMCHealth will use $88.8 million of its recent state grant award for hospitals and health systems for the Kingston campuses. A planned renovation and expansion at the Mary”™s Avenue Campus and WMCHealth”™s strategic collaboration with Royal Philips, an international leader in health care technology, will transform the Kingston hospital into “one of the Northeast”™s most advanced community hospitals,” according to WMCHealth officials.
The HealthAlliance Hospital Broadway Campus will become a one-stop outpatient center providing primary care and behavioral health and support services. Israel said the two Kingston campuses are key components of a Healthy Neighborhood Initiative between HealthAlliance and educational institutions in the Kingston area, city and county agencies, community organizations and other local health care providers.
Thomas Collins, HealthAlliance board chairman, said the agreement “brings to our hospital system a financially stable, comprehensive health network that”™s based in the Hudson Valley.”
