WATERTOWN  —  Watertown Audiology, P. C. has cranked up its efforts to meet rising patient demand in the last year.

The hearing-care provider invested in both equipment and a second audiologist. It added a new sound booth at its office at 53-59 Public Square in Watertown, purchased new videonystagmography equipment, and acquired otoacoustic-emissions equipment.

The practice added the new sound booth and otoacoustic-emissions equipment in June. It added the videonystagmography equipment in January 2012.

Otoacoustic-emissions equipment uses a small microphone to measure whether the outer hair cells in the inner ear function. Providers mostly use it in tests for infants and children.

Videonystagmography testing evaluates a patient’s balance system. It determines whether vertigo, dizziness, and balance problems stem from inner-ear problems.

The new equipment was necessary because of rising patient demand, according to Watertown Audiology’s president and owner, Sarah Grimshaw-Sugden. Few providers offer hearing and hearing-aid care in Watertown Audiology’s coverage areas of Jefferson, Lewis, St. Lawrence, and Oswego counties, she adds.

“There are a lot of people with vertigo,” she says. “There aren’t a lot of audiologists up in this area.”

Watertown Audiology spent about $50,000 to acquire the sound booth (its second) and equipment, Grimshaw-Sugden says. The sound booth and otoacoustic-emissions equipment totaled $30,000, and the videonystagmography equipment tallied $20,000. The practice funded the acquisitions with financing from Watertown Savings Bank.

Installing the new sound booth required expanding the practice’s footprint by about 150 square feet. It leases about 2,000 square feet from the Woodruff Professional Group, according to Grimshaw-Sugden.

The second sound booth was necessary because Watertown Audiology hired a new audiologist, Sarah Fritz Brady, in July. Brady has experience in adult hearing testing, pediatric hearing testing, hearing-aid fitting, hearing-aid management, vestibular testing, and newborn hearing screening, along with tinnitus evaluations, dizziness testing, and balance testing. She previously worked in Columbus, Ga.

Brady’s addition to Watertown Audiology will help the practice serve its growing patient base and serve them quickly, according to Grimshaw-Sugden. It increased the number of patients the practice can see to 24 or more per day.

“When I was by myself, I was seeing 12 to 16 patients a day, which was difficult,” Grimshaw-Sugden says. “This has been needed for a long time. It’s just hard to find someone.”

Grimshaw-Sugden declined to share revenue totals for Watertown Audiology. She hopes the practice grows its revenue by 10 percent in 2012, which she says would be on par with recent years’ increases.

Watertown Audiology employs six people full time and two people part time. In the past year, it has added two new full-time positions, including Brady’s, as well as a part-time position.

Grimshaw-Sugden would eventually like to build a standalone facility to hold her practice. Owning its own building would give the practice more space and offer it more freedom to expand as needed, she says.

“I’m on the second floor of the Woodruff Professional Building, which has been a great place, and everybody in the building has been wonderful,” she says. “But sometime I’d probably like to expand. There’s no firm plan, but we’ve definitely been talking about it.”

The new building would likely be between 2,500 square feet and 3,000 square feet, Grimshaw-Sugden says, declining to disclose possible locations for the facility or a target date for construction. She wants to stay in Watertown, she adds.       

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com

SYRACUSE  —  A joint nurse-training program pioneered by Syracuse’s St. Joseph’s College of Nursing and Le Moyne College is becoming a model for institutions across the state because of a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The program, known as the Dual Degree Partnership in Nursing program, will be spread to other nursing schools using funding from the Princeton, N.J.–based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation granted $300,000 over two years to the cause and could renew its funding for an additional two years and $300,000.

The Dual Degree Partnership in Nursing program has students earn both associate and bachelor’s degrees in nursing in four years. It also lets students sit for the National Council of State Boards of Nursing’s National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses after three years.

St. Joseph’s and Le Moyne launched the program in 2005.

“It really came about because we wanted youth,” says Marianne Markowitz, dean of St. Joseph’s College of Nursing, which is located at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center and offers associate degrees in nursing.

“The youth were having difficulty doing my program in two years,” Markowitz continues. “They were taking three. We realized they needed that first year to get acclimated to college.”

St. Joseph’s and Le Moyne structured the joint nurse-training program to have students live on Le Moyne’s campus for four years. Students spend their first year at Le Moyne taking classes, then commute to St. Joseph’s for their middle two years to earn their associate degrees. They can take the National Council Licensure Examination after their third year, before returning to class at Le Moyne in their fourth year to earn their bachelor’s degrees.

That program model has helped retain students and boosted their success on the National Council Licensure Examination, according to Markowitz. In 2011, 96 percent of Dual Degree Partnership in Nursing program students passed the exam on their first attempt, she says. That compares to a statewide average of 84.7 percent of students coming out of associate-degree programs who passed the test on their first try that year.

All of the Dual Degree Partnership in Nursing students passed the test on their second try in 2011, Markowitz adds. About 50 students enter the joint program between St. Joseph’s and Le Moyne each year, she says.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant will help spread the joint nurse-training program’s model by funding coordination between schools that are already working to follow it. And the grant will give those schools a stipend for expenses like marketing, according to Susan Bastable, chair of the Department of Nursing at Le Moyne.

“[Markowitz] and I are going to serve as consultants and travel around the state, individually visiting programs,” Bastable says. “The purpose in doing so is to give them best practices. We didn’t struggle when starting the program, but we learned as we went along. Why not share that knowledge? We learned a lot of really good things to make sure that the student is really successful.”

Currently, 18 institutions are following the joint nurse-training model, including St. Joseph’s and Le Moyne. But that number could be on the rise.

That’s because some of the grant funding is earmarked for outreach to nursing schools that do not take part in a joint-training program. Bastable has identified about eight more schools that would be good candidates to establish their own dual-degree partnership programs, she says.

Data collection will also be funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant. The Foundation of New York State Nurses, a not-for-profit organization that attempts to increase public knowledge of nursing, is slated to set up a data repository to collect information from schools with joint nurse-training programs.

The Foundation of New York State Nurses is administering the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funding. Money will be channeled through the New York State Future of Nursing Action Coalition.

Bastable says that although schools are modeling their programs after the one set up between St. Joseph’s and Le Moyne, they aren’t going to duplicate it.

“The partners, the institutions, they may encounter things we haven’t,” she says. “We felt that others could replicate, not necessarily duplicate like a cookie cutter.”           

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com