Health Quest Emerging as Leader in Hudson Valley Healthcare
The Hudson Valley’s fastest-growing industries are known as ‘Eds and Meds’ — the educational and medical industries. With several well-known educational institutions and health facilities, these are the areas that young professionals in the region are encouraged to explore for potential careers, and they are making a huge impact on the community.
At the top of the medical sector is the Hudson Valley based Health Quest.
“Health Quest is a nonprofit healthcare provider that cares for about 800,000 people in the Mid-Hudson Valley,” said Tim Massie, Senior Vice President for Marketing, Public Affairs and Government Relations at Health Quest.
“We have three hospitals: Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, Vassar Brothers Medical Center — which is the hub of the system — here in Poughkeepsie, and Putnam Hospital Center in Carmel. Health Quest is the parent nonprofit organization of the hospitals and urgent care centers. We are based in Lagrangeville, so it is a totally local operation.”
According to Massie, also under the umbrella of Health Quest is The Heart Center in Poughkeepsie, which is “one of the top-rated heart centers for outcomes in New York State,” a nursing home and skilled rehab care in Rhinebeck; and home healthcare, among other services and facilities.
“We are the second-largest employer in Dutchess County,” Massie said. “We will probably be the largest in about a year or two — we are second only to IBM. We have about 5,800 employees in the area. We like to consider ourselves the provider of choice for people in the Mid-Hudson Valley.”
Health Quest seeks to overtake IBM by expanding its services and facilities across the Hudson Valley region.
By July, they plan to add a fourth hospital to their system by taking over Sharon Hospital in Sharon, Connecticut. It currently serves eastern Dutchess County as well as western/northwestern Connecticut.
Additionally, a new medical practice facility — including urgent care — is in the planning stages. The facility was originally planned for the former Staples building in the Mid Hudson Plaza, however in a new development, Health Quest has pulled out of that site and they are currently searching for an alternative site.
“For the last couple of years, we talked about expanding our urgent care network,” Massie said. “The model of healthcare is changing a little bit — we want not all people to come to the emergency room when they have an issue.”
Massie explained that since some people do not have access to primary care physicians, they will often go to the emergency room for treatment for minor issues or, alternatively, they will let issues go until they become serious. Now, they will not feel so inclined to do either.
“We are expanding our network to have primary care physicians,” Massie said. “That is a particular issue in Dutchess County and even more so in Ulster County… the current crop of physicians is aging and retiring. So for example in Ulster County, the average age of a physician there is 57. Most like to work into their 60’s, some even later, so we are constantly hiring new physicians.”
The goal of the new urgent care facility is obviously to provide healthcare first and foremost, but also to take pressure off the ER. At the future facility, just about everything — with the exception of an overnight stay — will be treatable.
The medical practice is one of three major Health Quest non-hospital healthcare centers planned for the near future. One is slated to open on Route 299 in the Town of Lloyd near the New Paltz border; the other, an 81,000-square foot facility, is going to take over the former Macy’s building in the Hudson Valley Mall in Kingston.
Health Quest’s biggest project is the patient pavilion at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, set to open in 2019 and made possible by the increased number of patients who are going to the growing hospital for their healthcare needs.
“We are building what they are calling a ‘patient pavilion’ on the Vassar Brothers campus — it’s a brand-new hospital at Vassar Brothers,” Massie said. “It’s the largest construction project in the history of the City of Poughkeepsie. As a matter of fact, we are going to the planning board to ask to permission to build yet another floor on top of the already-designed building because of the significant growth we are seeing with patients coming to our facilities.”
The growing patient base Health Quest is seeing in its facilities is a very good sign for the nonprofit organization — it shows that Hudson Valley residents are trending in the direction of seeking healthcare at home, rather than abroad.
“Three years ago, 28 to 29 percent of people in the Hudson Valley were going outside the Hudson Valley for their healthcare — primarily to New York City or Albany — so we have added a number of services,” Massie said.
“One is called neurointerventional radiology. If you have a blood clot in your brain that causes a stroke, we can insert a catheter through the groin, go up into the brain and pull the blood clot out, and you are saved a number of symptoms of stroke.
“The first patient we had more than a year ago was a woman in her 60’s from Putnam County who had a major stroke. She was found by her husband in a comatose state in fetal position, totally unresponsive. She came to Vassar Brothers, the doctor performed the procedure and within three hours she was sitting up in her bed asking for her laptop so she could do work.”
The other procedure, Massie explained, is called trans-aortic valve replacement (TAVR).
“You don’t have to open the chest, which is especially important for elderly patients, and with a catheter you can do a total replacement of the valve of the heart,” Massie said.
“We are also starting a liver program — these are all services that you had to go outside of the Hudson Valley for.”
According to Massie, a significant portion of those who used to go elsewhere have been drawn back into the Hudson Valley for their healthcare thanks to these advanced medical procedures, and he believes that the patient pavilion will reduce the percentage of those who leave even further.
“We are seeing people who are choosing us over other healthcare systems… we have to prepare for that growth which is why we are looking at adding these new facilities,” Massie said.
Health Quest continues to grow at an exponential rate.
“When you take a look at our growth pattern, I would say in the next two years or less, we are going to surpass IBM for employment in the region,” Massie reiterated. “When you take a look at the types of jobs offered — they range from people who have just a high school diploma, to two years of community college, right on up to people at the PhD/MD levels.”
There are 290 jobs currently posted on the Health Quest website, and Massie estimated that the organization has hired around 1,000 employees in the past three years. In an area deemed ‘under-served’ in terms of doctors, they are constantly hiring. Right now they are looking for nurses, not just for the hospitals but for smaller medical practices as well.
“There are job opportunities for people at all skill levels, plus we will pay to help you develop your skills — if you want to get a bachelor’s or a master’s degree, we will help you get those degrees. These good-paying jobs allow our employees to go out and support local coffee shops, grocery stores, hairdressers, restaurants — so we have among the greatest economic impact in the entire Hudson Valley region.”
Health Quest is a $1.1 billion nonprofit organization. Massie explained that being nonprofit allows them to put money back into the system, so for every dollar spent by the organization, it generates 2.5 times the number of dollars in economic activity — that means Health Quest has a $2.5 billion economic impact on the community.
“We are doing very well, which allows us to then pump money back into the system to provide even more services and better services to the area,” Massie said. “We have no shareholders, so we do not have to show a dividend to shareholders and the money gets pumped right back into the system.”
As a current major contributor, what Health Quest does in the near future could put them at the helm of economic and job growth in not just Poughkeepsie, but in all of Dutchess County.
