United States : St. Ann s $75-million project includes new buildings, patient-centered care.

Byline: manish03

Changes are on the horizon for St. Ann's Community, which is spearheading a $75-million project to better address community demand.

That project includes the demolition of The Heritage, a 19-story high-rise nursing home, and the construction of two new buildings, one on St. Ann s Irondequoit campus and the other on its Webster campus. The state has pledged $17.6 million for The Heritage's demolition, which will save the state an estimated $3.2 million annually in Medicaid costs, according Betty Mullin-DiProsa, president and CEO of St. Ann s Community.

Savings to the state would derive from reduced payments on unoccupied nursing home beds and from shifting Medicaid spending away from long-term care to less-expensive alternatives, Mulin-DiProsa said, noting that such potential savings were highlighted during statewide efforts to reduce health-care redundancies and inefficiencies.

The Heritage, which currently provides 203 beds for patients who need nursing-home care and five palliative-care beds for terminally ill patients, will be torn down because it has outlived its usefulness, she said. Although it has been serving as a nursing home, The Heritage originally was designed as an assisted-living apartment building, she added.

"Federal regulations changed, and we had to operate it as a skilled-nursing facility in order to serve Medicaid-eligible residents," she said.

She cited several ways in which the building s design has been falling short for its current use. Elevators in The Heritage, which was built in 1973, are small and unable to accommodate the growing number of walkers, scooters and wheelchairs used by the building's aging residents. Such mobility devices are all the more crucial because Heritage residents must make their way to a central dining room for meals and other activities. The arrangement is not practical, Mullin-DiProsa said.

These issues will be addressed with the new construction on the Irondequoit and Webster campuses, which could begin in about a year if St. Ann s gets regulatory approvals from state and local agencies and secures construction financing. Mullin-DiProsa said St. Ann s officials are planning a capital campaign for next year to help raise money for the project. The Heritage will be demolished in about a year, after construction of the new buildings is complete.

The plan features a new four-story, 78,000-square-foot building in Irondequoit that would house 72 transitional-care beds for patients needing short-term rehabilitation and 10 palliative-care beds for terminally ill patients. In Webster, a three-story, 56,000-square-foot skilled-nursing facility is planned for the Cherry Ridge campus and would house 60 skilled-nursing and 12 transitional-care beds. The new rooms in both Irondequoit and Webster will be equipped to accommodate a higher level of care, including oxygen hookups in some of the rooms, Mullin-DiProsa said.

Overall, the project will reduce by 49 the total number of state-c

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