Clifton Springs Hospital joins Rochester Regional Health System

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Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic has officially joined Rochester Regional Health System, RRHS officials said Wednesday.

An employer of 775, the 124-bed Clifton Springs Hospital ranked as the fourth largest employer on the Rochester Business Journal’s most recent list of Ontario County employers. It is the fifth area hospital to join RRHS.

Clifton Springs induction into RRHS comes as the latest of a string of area hospital consolidations that has seen almost all of the region’s small and mid-sized community hospitals come under the wing of one of two increasingly larger health systems—RRHS or the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The trend has picked up steam as rural and small-town hospitals, plagued by low occupancies and underutilization, have found it harder and harder to stay afloat financially and faced difficulties attracting and retaining adequate medical staff.

First announced in September 2013, as a merger between Clifton Springs Hospital and Rochester General Health System, the Ontario County hospital’s induction into RRHS has been in the works for some two years. 

RRHS formed in mid-2014 with the merger of Unity Health System and RGHS. In January, RRHS formally joined with United Memorial Medical Center in Batavia. A merger between United Memorial and RGHS had already been in the works when RRHS formed.

Over roughly the same span, URMC—which runs Strong Memorial and Highland hospitals in Rochester—brought Thompson Health in Canandaigua under its wing.

URMC has also announced affiliations with Noyes Health in Livingston County and Jones Memorial Hospital in Allegany County. It is exploring formalizing ties with both of the rural health care organizations.

A similar affiliation between URMC and Lakeside Health System ended when Lakeside closed its hospital. URMC subsequently bought Lakeside’s Brockport hospital building, which it turned into an ambulatory surgery center and a freestanding emergency room under Strong Memorial’s license. 

Hospital consolidations have helped make URMC and RRHS into the region’s largest and second largest health care organizations respectively, and its two largest employers.

With some 14,000 workers, RRHS is the also area’s second largest private employer. URMC’s parent, the more than 25,000-worker UR, is the region’s largest private employer. The medical center employs more than 17,000 of the university’s workforce and accounts for over 80 percent of its revenue.  

With the Clifton Springs/RRHS merger’s April 1 completion, RRHS regional president of operations Dustin Riccio M.D. assumes top management responsibilities for Newark-Wayne Community Hospital and Clifton Springs Hospital.

Lewis Zulick M.D., who had served as Clifton Springs’ interim CEO since the January 2013 resignation of former Clifton Springs CEO John Galati, has been named chief of surgery for Clifton Springs and Newark-Wayne Community Hospital in Wayne County.
 
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