Hospital jobs eliminated at HealthAlliance in Kingston – The Daily Freeman

KINGSTON, N.Y. The parent company of HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley said it laid off hospital employees in Kingston on Mondayto eliminate "redundancies" as it begins to consolidate inpatient services at its two city locations into the Mary's Avenue Campus.

Westchester Medical Center Health Network would not say how many people were let go, only that there was no reduction of bedside nursing positions and that services will continue at current levels.

WMCHealth also wouldn't say which departments lost employees, whether any nurse managers were laid off or if more cuts were anticipated.

"The next phase of consolidating the operations of two hospitals (the Broadway and Mary's Avenue campuses) into one hospital will result in position redundancies," WMCHealth said in a press release issued after repeated inquiries by the Freeman. "As such, some reduction in our workforce is necessary for operational efficiencies and responsible fiscal management of the organization.

"Patient safety will always be paramount at HealthAlliance, and the outstanding care provided by our teams will continue, with services continuing at current levels with no reduction in bedside nursing positions," the company said.

One employee who was let go Monday said he was called into the hospital's human resources office, told to surrender his keys and badge, and escorted from the property. The employee,who was granted anonymity to speak for this story,said he believed others who were laid off Monday had similar experiences.

The planned expansion of the Mary's Avenue Campus, formerly Benedictine Hospital, and the consolidation of all inpatient services into that facility first were announced in 2013, though the size of the expansion later was scaled back. This past March, construction workers placed the final beam for the frame of what will be the 79,000-square-foot addition to the campus.

The Broadway Campus, formerly Kingston Hospital, is to become a multi-discipline, outpatient "medical village."

The new structure on the Mary's Avenue property, to be completed next year, will comprise 175 new patient beds, mostly in private rooms; a new 25,000-square-foot emergency department, which will include cardiac observation and behavioral health services; and a 10-bed intensive care unit, along with a six-bed medical stepdown unit that will provide an intermediate level of care between the ICU and the new building's medical-surgical wards.

Also planned, according to HealthAlliance, are a new birthing center with "ultramodern labor, delivery and postpartum rooms"; a new imaging department; and remodeled centers for ambulatory surgery, infusion therapy and endoscopy.

Additionally, the existing hospital building on Mary's Avenue is to undergo renovations to 48,000 square feet of space.

The hospital addition and related renovations in the existing building have a price tag of about $93 million and are key to the plan by WMCHealth to have all inpatient services in Kingston on one hospital campus.

Benedictine and Kingston hospitals, which are just half a mile apart in Midtown Kingston, affiliated under the HealthAlliance umbrella in 2008. WMCHealth, based in Valhalla, Westchester County, took over HealthAlliance in 2016.

Last spring, 60 beds for mental health and detox patients were shifted from the Mary's Avenue Campus to MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie, also operated by WMCHealth, to make room for an expected surge in Ulster CountyCOVID-19patients. The surge never happened, but the mental health beds have not been re-established.

Last month, Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan and Ron Colavito, president and chief executive officer of Access: Supports for Living Inc., announced a new urgent-care facility to treat mental health and substance abuse issues was opening at 368 Broadway, next to the Broadway Campus of HealthAlliance.

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Hospital jobs eliminated at HealthAlliance in Kingston - The Daily Freeman