Health insurer Fidelis Care moved quickly to expand its Fidelis Care at Home managed long-term care program into 11 counties in and around Central New York, according to one of its executives. 

“It wasn’t a hard decision for Fidelis,” says Elaine Morgan, a registered nurse who is Fidelis Care’s assistant vice president of managed long-term care. “We knew that where we needed to be was every county in New York state, following our other lines of business. We were already operational as a managed Medicaid program, we were in Family Health Plus, Child Health Plus, four lines of the Medicare line.”

Fidelis Care announced on Aug. 23 that the state approved Fidelis Care at Home for operation in Broome, Cayuga, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Herkimer, Oneida, Onondaga, Oswego, Tioga, and Tompkins counties. The state approved the Onondaga and Cayuga county expansions on May 1 and all other expansions in the Central New York area Aug. 1, according to Morgan.

Managed long-term care is a voluntary option for Medicaid-eligible beneficiaries requiring nursing-home-level care. Beneficiaries who are eligible for and choose managed long-term care programs can remain in their homes, receiving services such as in-home nursing, therapy, adult day care, and delivered meals.

Several types of organizations offer managed long-term care: home-care providers, multi-provider health-care networks, health plans, and nursing homes. Fidelis Care is a Catholic health plan based in Rego Park in the New York City borough of Queens. It has 793,000 members in 59 counties across the state, including 109,491 in Central New York.

It has operated Fidelis Care at Home since 1999, Morgan says. But before May of this year, it only had a state license for the program in Orange and Rockland counties.

Fidelis Care’s expansion of the managed long-term care network comes after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo accepted recommendations from a Medicaid Redesign Team in February, according to Morgan. The recommendations sought to redesign the state’s Medicaid program for efficiency and better patient results.

“There’s been a flurry of activities surrounding managed long-term care since the Medicaid Redesign Team looked at it,” Morgan says. “The existing plans that were operational in the state, they asked the plans to take a look at their business models, take a look at whether it was going to be financially sound for each plan to expand.”

Fidelis Care believed it had enough of a statewide footprint and experience in managed long-term care to expand out of Orange and Rockland counties, Morgan continues. So it began applying for permission from the New York State Department of Health to operate in additional counties.

At this point, it has received approval for 50 counties. Fidelis Care also has applications pending in 12 remaining New York counties.

Fidelis Care added staff members at each of its four regional offices to expand Fidelis Care at Home, according to Morgan. The regional offices are in Rego Park, Albany, Getzville in Erie County, and at 5010 Campuswood Drive in DeWitt.

At each regional office, Fidelis Care hired about five people: two outreach staff members, a full-time intake staff member, a per diem intake staff member, and an employee to handle marketing. In-home care will be provided by subcontractors, while Fidelis Care at Home coordinates enrollees’ care, Morgan says.

“It’s one-stop shopping,” she says. “They call one number here at Fidelis and have all of their care managed through our care-management team.”

Fidelis Care at Home currently has 601 members, mostly in Orange and Rockland counties, according to Morgan. It received five referrals in Onondaga County since unveiling the program for the area Aug. 23.

Morgan says she cannot provide an exact estimate for the number of people who will sign up for Fidelis Care at Home. But she anticipates it will be in “the thousands” statewide.

She also says she cannot predict the revenue the program will generate. Fidelis will receive a set Medicaid reimbursement per program participant per month, based on the region where a participant lives. In a majority of Onondaga County, that sum will likely be about $1,700 per participant per month, although the state has not yet completed rate negotiations, Morgan says.

Fidelis Care, which is a nonprofit organization, had program revenue totaling $1.9 billion in 2010, the most recent year for which its Form 990 is available from www.guidestar.org. It currently employs more than 1,500 people throughout the state.

The health plan’s DeWitt office has about 100 workers, according to Thomas Julian, Fidelis Care director of marketing, who heads the office. In addition to the newly hired workers focusing on Fidelis Care at Home, DeWitt–based employees work in marketing, provider relations, contracting, and government affairs, he says.

The office is in 8,000 square feet of space Fidelis Care leases from Illinois–based American Landmark Properties, Ltd.

The DeWitt office is using word of mouth as well as contact with community organizations and providers to find potential Fidelis Care at Home members, Julian says.

“We’re looking at a lot of hard work to get the program out,” he says. “We are currently working with the providers who are going to be a major source of referrals for this line of business — particularly discharge planners, people like that.”   

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com

OSWEGO — Construction work on a new student apartment complex has kicked off in Oswego with a planned opening in the fall of 2013.

Premier Living Suites will feature 18 three- and four-bedroom apartments. The three-story, 29,000-square-foot building will also feature a finished basement, a recreation room, fitness center, televisions in common areas, a lounge, a movie theater, and a computer area.

The furnished apartments will have two bathrooms, a kitchen, living area, and 40-inch flat-screen televisions. Amenities like cable television and wireless Internet are included in the rent, says Greg Furlong, one of the project’s developers.

Premier Living Suites is an affiliate of Furlong Properties, which owns several student-housing properties in converted houses around Oswego. The Premier project is the first time the company has undertaken a project of this magnitude, Furlong says.

The complex will also feature a security system with an identification card required to enter the building. Residents will have access to a free continental breakfast, fitness classes, and onsite parking.

The complex will be located at 247 W. Utica St., about a half mile from the campus of the State University of New York (SUNY) Oswego. Furlong says there is a need for more premium student housing in the city.

SUNY Oswego added a complex of its own similar to Premier and has seen a good response, Furlong says. A number of other colleges around the state have done the same and private companies have been adding luxury student housing close to campuses in recent years as well, he notes.

Much off-campus student housing is run down and landlords often overcharge, Furlong contends.

“We looked at what everyone else was doing,” he says of the Premier project. “We tried to raise the bar. We felt there was a huge need for good housing.”

The apartments will be ready for leasing next fall.

Another Furlong Properties sister company, Furdi Homes, is building the complex. The company specializes in modular homes and Premier will be built using the same approach.

Using modular building techniques will allow developers to keep the project’s cost down, Furlong says. He declined to discuss the exact cost, but says it will be well under $100 per square foot.       

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

SYRACUSE — Crouse Hospital is close to finishing a renovation and expansion of its Crouse Breast Health Center in Syracuse.

Work at the center, which offers imaging services such as mammograms and follow-up breast health care, is set to wrap up Sept. 17. That’s eight months after crews started renovations on Jan. 20.

The center sits across the street from Crouse Hospital in the Central New York Medical Center Building at 739 Irving Ave. Crouse leased an additional 600 square feet of space from the building’s owner, Chicago–based Lillibridge Healthcare Services, Inc., to expand the Breast Health Center to 6,200 square feet.

That additional space will be used for two new ultrasound rooms, according to Jeffrey Tetrault, Crouse Hospital’s director of engineering. The remodeling will also add patient changing rooms, he says.

The revamped center will have five patient-changing rooms, up from three. The rooms will each be about 40 square feet, much larger than the previous rooms, which were about 10 square feet each.

The new changing rooms will also offer more privacy, Tetrault says, by utilizing solid doors instead of the curtains that cordoned off the old changing rooms. And each patient will have one room dedicated to her during her time at the center.

Other improvements include a private patient-registration area and surfaces designed to make the center more comfortable, Tetrault says.

“It was your common hard-surface-floored, sterile, clinical-feeling area,” he says. “Now it’s going to be a warm, plush environment with crown molding on the ceilings and chair rail, along with multi-textured carpets.”

The center will have an energy-efficient heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning unit. And, workers are installing low-energy LED lighting systems with motion detectors.

“It’s not only to have a warm environment with multiple controls for patients for the heating and cooling systems,” Tetrault says. “We were also very sensitive to the energy efficiency.”

Crouse started consulting with physicians on the center’s redesign in March 2011, according to Tetrault. It also set up focus groups with women who had previously used the center in order to listen to their ideas on how it could be improved.

LPS Design Associates, Inc., of Stoneham, Mass. designed the upgraded center. Rochester–based LeChase Construction Services, LLC is the project’s general contractor.

Crouse expects the renovations to cost $1.5 million. The hospital is funding a majority of the work through its operations budget. Its not-for-profit fundraising organization, Crouse Health Foundation, is also helping to pay for the construction with a capital campaign.

The Crouse Breast Health Center did not shut down or relocate its operations while renovations were under way, according to Tetrault. Instead, crews planned construction in four separate phases, allowing equipment and staff members to shift as work moved to different sections of the center.

“When we flipped phases, we had to move physicians and imaging stations in a very short time frame to allow work to continue,” Tetrault says. “There was a lot of coordination with the end users, the general contractors, and ourselves.”

Crews are also on pace to perform about 60 percent of the renovations between the hours of 6 p.m. and 3 a.m., Tetrault adds. Crouse wanted a majority of the project to be done as shift work to maintain as quiet of an environment as possible during the Breast Health Center’s hours of operation, he says.

The Crouse Breast Health Center is staffed by 11 radiologists. It has a total of 20 staff members, including receptionists, patient-access personnel, mammography technicians, ultrasound technicians, and breast-health navigators. The center hired three breast-health navigators during the duration of the construction.

About 12,000 patients visit the center annually. It is not Crouse’s only facility in the Central New York Medical Center. The hospital also operates an outpatient imaging center and prompt care in the building.

Crouse Hospital, a private, not-for-profit hospital, is located at 736 Irving Ave. in Syracuse. It is licensed for 506 acute-care beds and 57 bassinets. The hospital employs 2,700 people and serves over 23,000 inpatients, 66,000 emergency-services patients, and more than 250,000 outpatients per year from 15 counties in Central New York and Northern New York.         

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com