NYAPRS Note: Agencies across the spectrum of health service delivery are looking strategically at their organizations and partnerships to determine the best course of development for their future. Market viability can ensure financial security in a changing environment, particularly as insurance networks re-form and old allegiances between providers and consumers are tested by competitors. A network of community health centers in LI are merging in a way similar to many providers that serve a diverse set of people across a region. The decision is made with an eye toward improving the customer experience and overall outcomes, and streamlining business practices for enhanced communication and efficiency. The test for BH providers—as they consider partnering with friends and competitors alike for managed care and DSRIP contracts—will be if they can continue to provide recovery-focused, person-centered care in the face of new business challenges and opportunities.
A New Long Island Network Takes Shape
Crain’s Health Pulse, 7/25/2014
Four Long Island nonprofits want to pull together into a single network of community health centers. The four entities, Developmental Disabilities Institute, Family Residences and Essential Enterprises, United Cerebral Palsy of Nassau County and United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Suffolk, have formed a corporation called LISH.
LISH, in turn, has filed a certificate-of-need application to build a diagnostic and treatment center and six extension clinics to treat developmentally disabled patients. As part of the application, LISH will operate the three extension clinics and four diagnostic and treatment centers run by the individual entities.
By combining their clinics into a “comprehensive network of community health centers,” the four entities hope to “reduce the inefficiencies in fragmented services, achieve efficiencies of scale … and effectuate a positive net financial impact on the four human-services organizations.” The groups anticipate that 81% of visits will be covered by Medicaid; the rest will be self-pay and charity patients.
LISH, soon to be known as Long Island Select Healthcare, plans to become a grantee of Hudson River HealthCare, a network of federally qualified health centers in the Hudson Valley and Long Island. A spokeswoman for Hudson River HealthCare would not comment on the project, but the LISH application states that “HRHC supports this application.”
Only one site, United Cerebral Palsy’s at Port Jefferson Station, would involve new construction. The total project is expected to cost just over $1 million.