The Central New York and Southern Tier job markets are hardly booming, but for some jobs, candidates are in demand. The health-care field has a few of those positions.

 

 

The New York State Department of Labor on Jan. 20 issued a list of the top five trending jobs for this year in regions around the state, based on what employers are telling the agency are the positions they are struggling to fill.

 

In Central New York (Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, and Oswego counties), the following job titles (and their annual median wage) are likely to see greater than normal growth through the end of 2015, the Labor Department said:

 

• Industrial-machinery mechanic ($49,620)

 

• Certified nursing assistant ($27,630)

 

• Electrician ($52,870)

 

• Welder ($36,710)

 

• Registered nurse ($59,130)

 

In the Southern Tier (Broome, Chemung, Chenango, Delaware, Schuyler, Steuben, Tioga, and Tompkins counties), these five job titles (and their annual median wage) are likely to see higher than normal growth through the end of 2015:

 

• Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers ($37,290)

 

• Nursing assistants ($28,480)

 

• Personal-care aides ($23,200)

 

• Customer-service representatives ($31,380)

 

• egistered nurses ($65,660)

 

The lists are based on occupational survey data and regional needs projected by the state Labor Department’s regional analysts, the agency said in a news release.

 

These jobs are in demand despite a tepid overall job market in Central New York and the Southern Tier. The Syracuse metro area lost 1,800 total jobs between December 2013 and this past December, the most jobs lost of any New York state metro area, according to Labor Department data released Jan. 22. 

 

The Binghamton metro area gained 500 jobs over the same 12-month span, an increase of 0.5 percent. But, that’s still shy of the state’s 1.2 percent job growth.

 

Karen Knapik-Scalzo, the state Labor Department’s regional labor-market analyst for Central New York, says the list looks at short- and long-term projections for job openings. The top five trending jobs are a sampling of employer-reported shortages, she says. 

 

In CNY, health care and skilled manufacturing workers are in demand, according to Knapik-Scalzo. “Those two industries were the two largest ones in terms of need,” she says.

 

The list also helps apprenticeship programs and community colleges determine where to focus their training, Knapik-Scalzo says.

 

The Southern Tier is not seeing much growth in the private sector, which is making it difficult for people to find jobs and keep their skills up to date, says Christian Harris, the agency’s regional labor-market analyst for the Southern Tier. Many potential workers lack the soft skills — getting to work on time, problem solving and communication — that are needed for many of these in-demand jobs, Harris says. 

 

Health-care services is an industry where an aging population demands more workers, he adds. 

 

The New York Labor Department encourages job seekers to visit the Jobs Express website (www.jobs.ny.gov), a database of job openings sorted by occupation and region throughout the state. Businesses can also post job listings on the site.                         

 

 

SYRACUSE — St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center’s leader believes its new electronic medical-record system will help improve the hospital’s annual financial performance in the coming years.

 

St. Joseph’s last May launched SJLinked, an electronic health-record (EHR) system across its entire organization, including the hospital, clinics, and the primary-care offices of St. Joseph’s Physicians.

 

The health-care organization has used electronic records since 1999, but the system-wide EHR means all providers are on the “same screen, ensuring consistency and improving coordination of care,” St. Joseph’s said in a news release in May 2014.

 

St. Joseph’s collaborated with Verona, Wisconsin–based Epic Systems to design SJLinked. Nearly 200 employees from various units worked with Epic for 18 months to build and test the customized EHR platform.

 

SJLinked enables St. Joseph’s doctors and nurses to share test results, medication lists, physician notes, and other information across hospital units, ambulatory services, and in-transitions between care settings.

 

The system connects “everything we do,” from the primary-care office through the hospital back out to the community, says Kathryn Ruscitto, president and CEO of St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center.

 

“Over time, I’m told by other CEOs they see their capture of revenue increase by almost 5 percent on an annual basis,” she says.

 

Ruscitto spoke with CNYBJ on Feb. 5.

 

The electronic records could prevent repeat tests and/or duplicating procedures in the course of a patient’s treatment.

 

“It improves the quality of care, has less impact on the patient, and, over time, produces better financial performance,” Ruscitto says of SJLinked.

 

St. Joseph’s expected to finish 2014 with annual revenue of nearly $634 million, according to information it provided for the Jan. 26 CNYBJ Progress Edition. The health-care organization is projecting revenue of more than $660 million in 2015.

 

SJLinked allows St. Joseph’s personnel to attribute, “without handwriting,” every aspect of a given patient’s care.

 

Ruscitto conceded that implementation of the new EHR system resulted in reduced productivity because “everybody has to slow down, learn the system.” She expected 2014 to be a “bumpy” year.

 

“Now we’re expecting to really realize the benefits going forward and every year, it’s going to have a bigger payback for us because we will have gone from hand writing, hand attributing, to everything being automated,” says Ruscitto.

 

The system “immediately” codes and produces the patient bill, so it’s “more accurate, less bouncing back, less audit related to it,” she adds.

 

Its previous software vendor informed St. Joseph’s that it was “pulling the plug” on the system, something the organization didn’t anticipate happening. 

 

“The last thing I wanted to do was rip [up] and replace a technology system the same year we were opening a new tower, but we had no choice,” she says.

 

Physicians and ACQA

St. Joseph’s and Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Central New York’s largest health insurer, are collaborating on an ACQA, which is short for accountable cost and quality arrangement.

 

An ACQA — which is designed to “achieve enhanced care coordination, improve patient satisfaction and outcomes, and reduce health-care costs” — will benefit Excellus members who are under the care of St. Joseph’s-affiliated physicians, the organizations said in a news release they issued last Aug. 27.

 

Ruscitto describes ACQA as “private insurance.” 

 

The ACQA is Excellus’ version in this market of what the state and federal governments are offering through the health-care exchanges under the Affordable Care 

Act, she noted.

 

The organizations believe they can deliver “better” health-care quality and avoid “unnecessary” costs by “improving access to primary care medical services (to manage chronic illnesses such as diabetes and reduce the need for emergency room visits), improving medication adherence rates and limiting duplication of services,” according to the Aug. 27 news release.

 

The ACQA assesses quality performance through the use of national quality measures, which include performance thresholds for diabetes, blood pressure, and coronary-artery disease.

 

With its collaboration with Excellus, St. Joseph’s has formed a clinically integrated network (CIN) of physicians, says Ruscitto.

 

Physicians that currently work for the hospital are now branded as St. Joseph’s Physicians.

 

Ruscitto says “more and more” physicians want to be part of that network, so the hospital will “continue to offer that option.” 

 

“But we also have a number of independent physicians who want to stay independent, so we’re joining together with them to create the clinically-integrated network [CIN],” she adds.

 

The clinically-integrated network involves all the physicians coming together to jointly begin to understand how to improve quality and reduce cost. 

 

“The first product we will offer through the CIN is ACQA. [It] won’t be the only, but it will be the first,” says Ruscitto. 

 

The group will also work to “better manage care” for the Medicaid and Medicare populations. 

 

“It will be physicians, in a governance role, talking together and saying … why is orthopedics doing it this way and cardiac surgery doing it this way. How do we get a better common platform for how a patient moves, and when we share a patient in common, how do we do a better job?,” she adds.

 

As of Jan. 1, about 300 physicians had enrolled to offer the AQCA product, says Ruscitto.