From Copake to Valatie to Cairo and everywhere in between, there’s one name in healthcare that residents can count on. For over 30 years, Columbia Memorial Health (CMH) has served the entirety of Columbia and Greene counties, growing and changing along the way to meet the needs of a diverse population that stretches from the Catskills in the west to the Berkshires in the east.
“In the late 1990s, it was clear that CMH needed to provide more services outside the walls
of the hospital in Hudson,” says Jay P. Cahalan, CMH’s President and CEO. “Today, we offer 40 distinct physician practices out in the community.” From primary to specialty to urgent care, the growing network of facilities and providers CMH has established across three counties has allowed it to ensure local care for its communities.
Since 2016, that network has become even stronger thanks to CMH’s affiliation with Albany Med. The partnership provides patients in Columbia and Greene counties with a level of specialty care close to home that rural communities usually don’t have access to.
CMH patients can continue to see their regular doctor while receiving many of the benefits of Albany Med’s network in over 20 specialties—from cardiology and advanced stroke care to neurosurgery, breast surgery, maternity care, and medical imaging, to name just a few.
“Healthcare tends to be fragmented, and patients are often frustrated with trying to coordinate everything themselves,” says Cahalan. “What we’ve been able to do as a system is to integrate our services among providers, treatments, and services.”
CMH and Albany Med providers are working toward a single electronic health record, which will allow clinicians to quickly collaborate on patient cases using a shared medical records system that will help deliver seamless continuity of care. Instead of traveling long distances to see an unaffiliated specialist, patients can visit a CMH office close to home where many of Albany Med’s specialty providers now have regular hours. And if they do need to travel to Albany for certain surgeries or procedures, every effort is made to ensure the care is highly integrated. “We’re connecting lots of dots wherever we can for patients,” says Cahalan. “That’s what a good health system is supposed to do.”
Columbiamemorialhealth.org
