Syracuse Cooperative Market formally opens location at Salt City Market

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Syracuse Cooperative Market has formally opened its new downtown Syracuse grocery store, its second location. The store, which sources its products from local farms, is located inside the Salt City Market at 484 S. Salina St. in Syracuse. The Syracuse Cooperative Market on April 29 held a formal ribbon-cutting celebration with […]

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Syracuse Cooperative Market has formally opened its new downtown Syracuse grocery store, its second location.

The store, which sources its products from local farms, is located inside the Salt City Market at 484 S. Salina St. in Syracuse.

The Syracuse Cooperative Market on April 29 held a formal ribbon-cutting celebration with remarks from Market General Manager Jeremy DeChario, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon, Allyn Foundation Executive Director Meg O’Connell, and other local dignitaries. The store opened to customers earlier in April.

“We had a soft opening for our new location at the Salt City Market earlier [that month]. We have seen an outpouring of support from the community and we’re adding new members daily,” DeChario said in a release. “We believe this store will have a dramatic impact on the quality of life in downtown Syracuse — for downtown residents and for employees who work here. We want to make sure the entire community knows that everyone is welcome to shop here.”

The grocery store’s first location opened in the Westcott section of Syracuse in 1972. While the co-op is member-owned and supported, it’s a “common misconception” that only members can shop there. The store is open to the public, but membership brings discounts and specials at the store, access to private events, eligibility to participate in committees and run for the board of directors, and patronage dividends.

“This new location was actually 100-percent financed by our members, through the market’s member loan program. And we are now in our second offering phase of this program,” DeChario said. “Supporting a co-op allows community members to enjoy the benefits of whole, local, and organic foods; build a strong connection to the community; and take pride in directly impacting the local food economy.”

The grocery store is open 7 days a week, from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., offering groceries, fresh produce, bulk foods, craft beer, and prepared to-go foods.

Syracuse apartment-rent prices rise in April, according to Zumper report

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The median rental price for most apartments in the Syracuse metro area rose more than 2 percent in April compared to March and nearly 4 percent from a year ago, according to the latest Zumper National Rent Report, issued on April 28. The median rental price of one-bedroom apartments in the Syracuse

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Oswego Health fundraising campaign nears $3.5 million goal

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OSWEGO, N.Y. — Oswego Health continues a fundraising campaign that has, so far, raised about $3 million of its $3.5 million goal. The initiative will help pay for the organization’s current priorities, which include “modernizing” inpatient care, a focus on mental health and wellness, and local orthopedic care at the Fulton Medical Center. To date,

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OSWEGO, N.Y. — Oswego Health continues a fundraising campaign that has, so far, raised about $3 million of its $3.5 million goal.

The initiative will help pay for the organization’s current priorities, which include “modernizing” inpatient care, a focus on mental health and wellness, and local orthopedic care at the Fulton Medical Center.

To date, community members, foundations, and corporations have contributed nearly $3 million toward the overall goal, or about 85 percent of the goal amount.

The fundraising effort seeks to “invest in and advance its mission of best-in-class health care,” Oswego Health, a health-care system with 17 locations, said in an April 21 news release.

The endeavor, titled “Caring for Our Community, Right at Home, The Campaign for Oswego Health,” is the result of the health system’s “consideration for future priorities,” while focusing on patient care.

Oswego Health’s internal and board leadership want to secure financial support for “identified strategic priorities — all of which began to take shape before the … coronavirus pandemic disrupted health care globally,” the release stated.

The fundraising campaign is chaired by Ed Alberts, who also serves as chairman of the Oswego Health Foundation board of directors and as vice-chair of the Oswego Health board. Alberts, and his wife, Emily Alberts, are “longstanding” supporters of the health-care system. The couple has donated $250,000 to the fundraising effort, Oswego Health said.

Ed Alberts is an entrepreneur and business owner whose businesses include Rehab Resources, a provider of therapy care throughout upstate New York; Little Lukes Preschool and Childcare Center, with six CNY locations; the Riverwalk Apartments in Oswego; and WIRED Telecom, a company based in Oswego that specializes in wiring and IT systems for franchises.

Inpatient care

Oswego Health in early 2020 started work on a “complete renovation” of its medical-surgical unit.

However, the coronavirus pandemic stopped construction with the increased need for patient beds “in the event of a [patient] surge.” With the eventual decline in COVID-19-hospitalized patients, Oswego Health has resumed construction. The project to renovate the third and fourth floors of Oswego Hospital will be complete by the end of 2021.

Once finished, the floors will include 41 private rooms and four semi-private rooms. Each floor will also have areas where family members can gather.

In addition, each patient room will be equipped with a new heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) filtration system purchased through Healthway Family of Brands. Indigo-Clean, a new light technology will be installed in each patient bathroom to “continuously” disinfect the surfaces within the bathroom area. The technology is known to reduce pathogens by “nearly 99 percent, creating a greatly reduced chance of hospital-acquired infection and better patient outcome,” Oswego Health said.

Mental health and wellness

The Lakeview Center for Mental Health and Wellness opened in late January, which Oswego Health says is part of its work at “improving the mental health of CNY residents.”

As the “only” behavioral health services inpatient and outpatient provider in Oswego County, Oswego Health renovated 42,000 square feet of a former grocery store to include 32 inpatient beds. Primary-care services are also available onsite.

The mental-health care facility offering is in response to a “current, silent epidemic of those suffering with underfunded and inadequate services,” Oswego Health noted.

Reed begins duties as Excellus president & CEO

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The leadership transition at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield is complete as James Reed began his duties as president and CEO on May 3, succeeding Christopher Booth in that role. Excellus has appointed Reed as CEO of the $6.2 billion health plan and its parent company, the Lifetime Healthcare Companies. Reed has been serving

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Partners team up on free legal services for injured workers

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The New York State (NYS) Workers’-Compensation Board has launched the Injured Workers Legal Assistance Project (IWLAP), its “first-ever” legal-assistance project to help injured workers obtain medical treatment. Under the project, injured workers can complete a simple online form maintained by the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) to directly request a match to an NYSBA-member attorney

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Under the project, injured workers can complete a simple online form maintained by the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) to directly request a match to an NYSBA-member attorney who will represent workers with pro-bono help in certain workers’-compensation claims.

The form — hosted by NYSBA along with resources and information for attorneys interested in volunteering with NYSBA — is available at the webpage for the workers’-compensation injured workers legal assistance pro-bono project. Visit: https://nysba.org/pro-bono-services/#workers_compensation_project.

The board is partnering with the NYSBA to connect volunteer attorneys looking to assist injured workers with these claims. The partnership with NYSBA will allow for “faster processing” of representation referrals thanks to use of client intake and referral digital platforms.

In addition, this partnership will expand on recent collaboration between New York State and NYSBA’s COVID-19 pro-bono network, which has offered New Yorkers free legal assistance when seeking unemployment-insurance benefits and in probate and estate proceedings.

“The Injured Workers Legal Assistance Project gives injured workers better access to justice when they have difficulty obtaining medical care for their work-related injury or illness,” Clarissa Rodriguez, chair of the NYS Workers’ Compensation Board, said in a release. “The project helps workers with medical-only claims find legal representation, which also improves the overall operation of the workers’ compensation system.”

After identifying the need for representation of injured workers in medical-only claims, the NYS Workers’-Compensation Board created IWLAP and invited legal-service organizations to partner with it. In these medical-only claims, the insurance carrier or self-insured employer that pays the medical benefits has accepted liability but is disputing the medical treatment sought by the injured worker. These cases typically pose a challenge for injured workers seeking legal representation as “no attorney fees are awarded when there are no lost wages.”

The board provides training and support to host legal-service organizations and their volunteer attorneys. The board’s virtual hearings system, in use statewide since 2018, makes volunteering for IWLAP easier, as the system allows injured workers, attorneys/licensed representatives, and other parties to attend workers’-compensation hearings remotely through secure videoconferencing.

Users can log in once and move from one hearing to another, anywhere in the state, eliminating travel and reducing time spent away from work. The virtual-hearing system has allowed the Board to continue holding hearings uninterrupted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

IWLAP launched in November 2020 in partnership with the New York State Unified Court System’s attorney emeritus program (AEP). It also involved two host legal-service nonprofit organizations — The Legal Project, based in Albany and the Worker Justice Center, which has offices in Rochester, Kingston, and White Plains.

More than 60 injured workers across New York state have been offered free legal assistance and more than a dozen have consulted with and retained pro-bono counsel in that effort.

The AEP, administered in part by Fordham University School of Law, helps recruit volunteer attorneys who assist injured-worker clients through one of the host organizations. AEP, The Legal Project, and the Worker Justice Center will collaborate with NYSBA and the NYS Workers’-Compensation Board to continue identifying volunteer attorneys and injured workers in need of assistance.

New interim dean starts at St. Joseph’s College of Nursing

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A woman who once served as an intensive-care unit nurse at St. Joseph’s is now the interim dean of the College of Nursing. St. Joseph’s Health has named Susan Berger to the post. Berger has served on the governing board for the College of Nursing for the past seven years and as

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Oswego Health offers RN tuition-assistance program, emergency-services residency

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OSWEGO, N.Y. — Oswego Health is offering its employees some perks to provide incentive to keep workers offering health care locally. They include an RN (registered nurse) tuition-assistance program and an emergency-services residency. RN tuition-assistance program Oswego Health is offering its employees an RN tuition-assistance program if they’re “looking to advance their training as a

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OSWEGO, N.Y. — Oswego Health is offering its employees some perks to provide incentive to keep workers offering health care locally.

They include an RN (registered nurse) tuition-assistance program and an emergency-services residency.

RN tuition-assistance program

Oswego Health is offering its employees an RN tuition-assistance program if they’re “looking to advance their training as a registered nurse.”

The program will reimburse employees up to $10,000 per year as they pursue a bachelor’s degree in nursing or a master’s degree in nursing, per a May 3 announcement from the health system.

“We know firsthand that a highly-educated nursing workforce strengthens the quality of care provided to patients,” Marquand Brown, VP of human resources at Oswego Health, said. “Since launching this program at the start of 2020 we’ve already had [19] employees receive tuition assistance, totaling over $75,000 in funding towards their education.”

Oswego Health cites information from the Washington, D.C.–based American Association of Colleges of Nursing as a reason for this program.

The organization has said that “the U.S. is projected to experience a shortage of RNs that is expected to intensify as Baby Boomers age and the need for health care grows. Compounding the problem is the fact that nursing schools across the country are struggling to expand capacity to meet the rising demand for care given the national move toward health-care reform.”

Oswego Health also sees the tuition-assistance program as a “unique” perk to “entice” health-care workers to provide care locally.

Stacy Stevens is among those who recently graduated after participating in the program. “When the RN tuition-assistance program became available, I was already halfway through receiving my [associate degree] in nursing,” Stevens said. “Honestly, I was just going to power through, but this program gave me much-needed financial relief. I saved so much money and headache by not having to take out a personal loan. This program is such a benefit for anyone who wants to grow in their career while working.”

Emergency-services residency

Oswego Health also recently launched another new program, which it calls an emergency-services residency.

This program offers on-the-job training for graduate nurses through a 12-month residency with a three-month critical care rotation. Throughout the “fully compensated” residency, candidates will have more than 150 hours of classroom education including pharmacology, IV therapy, telemetry, critical care, a trauma-nursing core course (TNCC), and emergency nursing pediatric course (ENPC), “all with structured clinical orientation with experienced preceptors.”

The program offers the opportunity to advance from a graduate nurse (GN) to RN2 at the completion of residency.

“As a small community health-care system, our employees have opportunities for advancement across varying divisions, however, we knew we needed to identify programs that would personally benefit employees,” Melissa Purtell, director of nursing, said. “Whether that be helping to support their continuing education through tuition assistance or the experience of a residency program right out of college.”

Oswego Health has so far had five employees complete the residency program.

JULIAN SPRINGER

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JULIAN SPRINGER recently joined Colgate University as its new director of physical education and recreation and chair of physical education. Springer — who brings 16 years of higher-education experience within athletics, student affairs, and collegiate coaching — comes to Colgate from Bradley University, after serving two years there as the director of basketball operations. Prior

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JOE ORLANDO

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JOE ORLANDO has joined S.E.E.D. Planning Group as an investment analyst in the firm’s Binghamton office. Before joining S.E.E.D., he worked at the Vanguard Group as a fixed-income associate. Orlando will be working alongside Fred Costantino, chief investment officer, aiding the investment management team with investment research, reporting, trading, and providing analysis to the financial

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EMMANUEL NWOGU

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EMMANUEL NWOGU, D.O. has joined the medical staff of Carthage Area Hospital as an OB/GYN provider. He is located at Women’s Way to Wellness Clinic on North Mechanic Street in Carthage. Nwogu graduated from Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2008, followed by a residency at St. John Episcopal Hospital in Queens; Trinitas Regional

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