St. Elizabeth’s hospital has been around since 1866, and is no stranger to health care in the area, according to Robert Scholefield, its Chief Operating Officer.
“We have 14 physician offices throughout Oneida/ Herkimer County. We have a combination of inner city, suburban and rural health care clinics. We employ over 60 physicians throughout those clinics, and we’ve been doing that since 1975—so it’s not something new for us,” he said.“As far as the Town of Webb is concerned… our ‘family medicine residency’ program has been sending physicians to this clinic for nearly 20 years. As you may or may not know, Dr. Socash is a graduate of our program. He has been a friend to the medical centers and continues to work for us at the Family Medicine Center as a preceptor to the residents in the winter months. And it was because of him and his discussions with us that we pursued this opportunity.”
“We have a tremendous respect for Dr. Socash…and a respect and familiarity with this clinic, so we thought it was a good fit.”
Scholefield cited St. E’s Waterville and Little Falls clinics as having similarity to the Town of Webb undertaking.
“We opened those clinics at the request of those communities, and we’ve been there for dozens of years at their request,” he said.
In both locations, the existing physicians and most of the nurses stayed on, he said.
“We don’t look at this or any other [small clinic] as a business operation, a business venture—‘hey, let’s see if we can go up to Old Forge and make some money in the clinic’,” he Scholefield said.
“Quite frankly, most of the clinics in themselves, on a stand-alone basis, break even at best,” he said.
“The value to us is the patients that come to the Medical Center eventually for care.”
To be clear, patients always are free to make their own medical care choices.
But even so, there is value in connecting with patients through clinics like those in Waterville, Little Falls, and the one being proposed for Old Forge.
The hope is that St. Elizabeth’s would be Old Forge’s hospital, by choice of the patient, as well as their primary care clinic, Scholefield said.
