OSWEGO — Gentiva Health Services, Inc. decided to move from its home of five years in Oswego to accommodate increased staffing levels that left its longtime office bulging at the seams. “We’ve really just outgrown the space,” says Bernadette Schuffenecker, branch director of Gentiva’s Oswego office. “We would have been happy to stay [in place] […]
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OSWEGO — Gentiva Health Services, Inc. decided to move from its home of five years in Oswego to accommodate increased staffing levels that left its longtime office bulging at the seams.
“We’ve really just outgrown the space,” says Bernadette Schuffenecker, branch director of Gentiva’s Oswego office. “We would have been happy to stay [in place] if we weren’t growing.”
The home-based health-services provider decided to relocate its Oswego office from 335 W. First St. to 19 Fourth Ave. in Oswego. It had been looking for new office space for about a year, Schuffenecker says.
Gentiva’s new office is 4,940 square feet, giving it more space than it had at West First St., where it leased 3,500 square feet. The company is leasing its new home from Hillside Commons, LLC.
The new space was necessary because Gentiva added 11 employees in Oswego in the last year. It had 17 full-time employees and two part-time workers at the beginning of 2011 and now employs 27 full time and three part time.
It made the new hires because the number of patients in Oswego County grew, Schuffenecker says. The office served about 125 patients at the beginning of 2011, while it now serves 190.
Gentiva Health Services, Inc. is a national home-health and hospice company based in Atlanta with more than 475 locations across the United States, including Central New York offices in Auburn, Liverpool, Oswego, and Utica. Its New York locations do not provide hospice services, according to Schuffenecker.
The company’s Oswego office provides nursing and rehabilitation services to senior citizens. Employees work with senior citizens in their homes but need office space to do paperwork, complete billing, and communicate with physicians, Schuffenecker says.
“A lot of our patients need physical therapy to get them moving so they aren’t homebound,” she says. “We do a lot of work after knee replacements and joint replacements.”
Gentiva also operates a program known as Safe Strides, aimed at people who have balance problems and are at risk of falling. Therapists work with patients so they can move around their homes and leave their homes safely.
Other therapy services the Oswego office administers include occupational therapy and speech therapy, Schuffenecker says. Those therapies can help seniors live independently in their homes, she adds.
The office’s nursing services include wound care and infusion services, which deal with intravenous medications. And the Oswego office helps set up medication plans and teach seniors about potential side effects from medications.
“Medication is a huge part of our job,” Schuffenecker says. “When you get older you can be on 10 medications, and it’s really difficult to manage the medications.”
The senior-citizen population in Oswego County is growing, and Gentiva anticipates demand for its services there will increase in coming years, according to Schuffenecker. The company is prepared to hire more employees in Oswego if it needs to and has made sure the new Fourth Avenue office has enough space for growth, she says.
“We looked for a space so we could grow another 25 to 30 percent if we need to,” Schuffenecker says.
Pat Benz of the Bell Group, a Syracuse–based commercial real-estate tenant-advisory firm, represented Gentiva as it searched for its
new home, along with Jim DiDia of the Chicago–based real-estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. The Bell Group and Jones Lang LaSalle worked together to handle lease negotiations and space-plan consulting, while the Bell Group provided a market review.
The new space on Fourth Avenue required new walls, ceilings, and floors, as well as electrical, data-line, and phone-line work, according to Schuffenecker. Hillside Commons, LLC coordinated the work, and expenses were built into Gentiva’s lease, she says.