By Christine Graf
Two $9 million physician-owned medical office buildings will be built on commercial property on Route 9 in Clifton Park.
Developer Rich Paulsen of Albany’s Paulsen Development will have a minority interest in both buildings, one at 1766 Route 9 and the other at 1785 Route 9.
They are being built by BBL Construction of Albany.
OrthNY will be the sole tenant of the two-story, 40,000-square-foot building at 1766 Route 9.
Construction is expected to begin this month, and the projected completion date for the project is September 2020.
Upon completion, OrthoNY will relocate their Clifton Park satellite office to the new facility. The satellite office is currently located in leased space in the Ellis Medicine building on Sitterly Road. OrthoNY also has a four-room ambulatory (outpatient) surgery center at 16 Maxwell Drive in Clifton Park. The $5.3 million physician-owned surgical center recently celebrated its grand opening.
“Clifton Park is still a growing community in some sense. It’s bustling, and with the Shenendehowa School District being so sports-heavy, it seemed like a good location for OrthoNY,” said CEO Julie Shaw. “We have our major hubs right now in Albany, Saratoga, and Schenectady, and then we have our smaller satellites. Clifton Park is actually smack in the center of all three of those hubs. It’s also an area we see as a great place to expand services. We don’t have a dominant presence in that area right now.”
The new Clifton Park office will have exam rooms, an MRI machine, and a physical therapy office. It will also have an eight-room urgent care that is expected to operate from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. OrthoNY operates smaller urgent cares in Saratoga, Albany, and Schenectady. The Clifton Park office will also feature a spine center that will offer both comprehensive care and pain management procedures.
“We have spine coverage throughout OrthoNY, but we will have pain management physicians who specialize is assessing and evaluating back pain—they call themselves interventional pain management spine specialists,” said Shaw. “They will be working in conjunction with our orthopedic spine surgeons. Our goal would be to market it as a spine center of excellence and offer some comprehensive care and perhaps even some pain management procedures.”
The center will have a procedure suite that will allow patients to receive epidural steroid injections as well as other procedures. Having an on-site procedure suite eliminates the need for patients to travel to ambulatory surgery centers or hospitals
OrthoNY currently employs approximately 400 people at nine locations. They will need to hire additional X-ray techs, medical assistants, and MRI techs to staff the new Clifton Park office.
The OrthoNY office will be located just a short distance from the second building that is being developed by Paulsen Development.
Located at 1785 Route 9, it will be owned by CDPHP, Albany ENT & Allergy Services, Albany Gastroenterology Consultants, Capital Cardiology Associates, and Capital District Renal Physicians. Construction of the two-story, 40,000-square-foot building is expected to begin in March 2020 and be completed by early 2021.
Explaining CDPHP’s investment in a project with independent physicians, CDPHP president and CEO John Bennett said, “It’s been our heritage and strategy for over 30 years to partner with our physicians. We partner with them in many ways that we feel can bring value to our members and to the community at large.
“We were approached by a number of physicians with their idea to provide a better patient care in a building in Clifton Park. When were approached with that opportunity, we said yes. It’s an opportunity for us to show our members and their patients that we can provide a patient experience that offers them things they need that maybe they are not getting.”
According to Bennett, their goal is to deliver an enhanced patient experience through the use of an integrated delivery system (IDS). Organizations that utilize an IDS provide a continuum of healthcare services and align resources better than most traditional healthcare delivery systems. The use of an IDS has been proven to improve medical care quality while controlling costs.
“We saw this as an opportunity to help these practices provide that for their patients in a way that will provide an experience that will be much smoother and easier with everything from patient scheduling to getting follow up care,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s not about the building. It’s about the experience in the health care journey that occurs once you enter the building and after you leave it.”
CDPHP will be assisting with the design of the building. Once it is opened, they will provide staffing in the centralized check in and check out area. They will also be involved with the scheduling of referrals, transportation, and follow up visits. CDPHP will offer a variety of classes and programs for their members in the new building.
According to Bennett, it is unusual for network health insurers to partner with physicians in this manner. No other insurers in the Capital Region employ the use of integrated delivery systems.
“This is our first time doing this, but there are other people who have similar buildings around the country. Through our contacts with other health plans and organizations, we have been able to travel to these places and see what they are doing,” he said.
