Sheehan adds services
A series of new partnerships are enabling Sheehan Health Network to expand services beyond its core business of detox and rehab.
In early August, Sheehan reopened an expanded primary care clinic through a collaboration with BlueCross BlueShield and the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority. The organization is also working with Roswell Park Cancer Institute on cancer screenings for patients; and a drug trial for a drug that helps fight addiction through another BlueCross partnership.
Next up will be a dental clinic at the hospital through a partnership with Kaleida Health and the University at Buffalo; and development of a research department on substance abuse in tandem with UB’s Research Institute on Addictions.
June Hoeflich, president and CEO, says partnering is a great way to take advantage of the expertise of the region’s health-care institutions while expanding what Sheehan can offer to its customers.
“Sheehan used to be an island unto itself. Now we have excellent collaborations with UB, Kaleida, Roswell and ECMC,” she says.
The dental clinic, set for a soft opening in September, will offer both pediatric and adult care in a newly furnished lab on the second floor of Sheehan. It will also offer a convenient opportunity for residents of the adult day care program housed on Sheehan’s third floor. That program is another example of partnerships that work: The program houses the merged adult care programs formerly managed by Schofield Residence Nursing Facility and Episcopal Church Home & Affiliates.
Operating in the black on a budget of about $9 million and 114 employees, Sheehan has come a long way in the four years since it filed for bankruptcy protection.
Founded in 1884 by the Sisters of Charity as Emergency Hospital on Pine Street, the hospital operated the region’s premier burn unit until the mid-1980s, when the unit was transferred to ECMC payday advance lender. A new facility was build on Michigan Avenue in 1979 with a significant bequest from philanthropist Paul Sheehan. The drug treatment program was added 10 years later.
The hospital ran into tough times in the 1990s, culminating with its Chapter 11 filing in 2004. Sheehan emerged from bankruptcy in 2006 and reorganized, focusing on its strengths in the drug treatment area. The timing couldn’t have been better: The state’s Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century (also known as the Berger Commission) called for shifting beds from Erie County Medical Center’s detox unit to Sheehan. The state also awarded Sheehan $3 million to help bolster care at the site.
“We looked at what we were good at and began to reconfigure services,” says Hoeflich, a retired banking executive who came to the facility as board chairman in 2003 and was named president and CEO in June 2007.
Today, the facility has 20 in-patient medically managed detox beds with an average stay of three days. It also has 30 beds for substance abuse rehabilitation, usually a 28-day stay. And the detox program recently received its first three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Rehabilitation Facilities.
With the reopening of the Emerson Young Clinic housed at the nearby Commodore Perry Housing complex on Perry Street, primary and preventative care services have joined the mix. An immunization clinic will open at the site soon.
“Our goal is to keep people out of the hospital emergency rooms,” Hoeflich says.
The hospital is now waiting for approval from the state Department of Health to open a medically supervised outpatient methadone program. It also hopes to add psychiatry to its license for Sheehan clinics.
Filed under: Uncategorized by Wolf