St. Peter’s Health Partners (SPHP), a member of Trinity Health, and Ellis Medicine have received approval from the New York State Department of Health for a Management Services Agreement (MSA). The agreement allows the two organizations to work together on projects designed to preserve and expand the community’s access to health care, while also strengthening Ellis’ financial standing and quality metrics.
Ellis will remain independent from SPHP throughout the two-year term of the agreement, with its Board of Trustees retaining local control. Under the MSA, two Trinity-SPHP executives will join the Ellis Senior Leadership Team. While the long-term vision continues to be a full affiliation in the years ahead, the MSA does not commit either Ellis or SPHP to a full affiliation in the future.
With the recent state approval, both parties will begin to collaborate on projects to improve operations at Ellis, focusing on such areas as materials management, finance services, information technology, patient experience, property management, quality improvement, and risk management.
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“Ellis is extremely proud of our people, the level of care we provide, and the community we serve, ” said Paul Milton, President and CEO of Ellis Medicine. “St. Peter’s brings tremendous medical expertise and resources to Ellis to help preserve and complement the quality of care that our community deserves. The commitment St. Peter’s is making to our region—while respecting the heritage of all the institutions that make up Ellis Medicine—gives us confidence that quality health care services will continue to be available to our neighbors, close to home.”
James K. Reed, M.D., President and CEO of SPHP, added: “The approval of the MSA is the next logical step in our ongoing collaboration. As health care institutions, we are always looking at how to best improve care for the communities we serve. Partnering with Ellis on this agreement is the natural evolution of our already strong relationship and will allow us to expand and enhance the availability of high-quality health care services in the Capital Region. We anticipate the community will see more and even better care as a result of this partnership.”
Meanwhile, the role of the Chief Medical Officer at Ellis will undergo a transformation to mirror the structure of the position within the SPHP and Trinity systems. Ellis’s David Liebers, MD, will assume that role on an interim basis. Once that position is filled by Trinity-SPHP, Dr. Liebers will remain in a crucial clinical role as an infectious disease specialist, and also serve in an advisory capacity to the Ellis Senior Management Team and the new Chief Medical Officer.
Michael W. Ellis, M.d
The MSA approval comes on the heels of the Ellis-SPHP announcement on Nov. 3 of a joint Provider Transition Agreement (PTA). Under that agreement, employed Ellis Medicine providers and select management become employees of St. Peter’s Health Partners Medical Associates (SPHPMA). The goal of the PTA is improved recruitment and retention, and the preservation of services in the community. Providers will continue to practice at Ellis locations with no disruption to patient care.
These latest agreements build on a long relationship between the two health care systems. Both Ellis and SPHP share a vision for a more fully integrated, region-wide approach to care that aims to improve the health of its neighbors; embraces new models such as value-based care; and lowers overall health care costs for the community. Both systems have been working toward this shared vision collaboratively since 2014 when they formed the Innovative Health Alliance of New York (IHANY) – the Capital Region’s first Clinically Integrated Network.
Since its inception, IHANY lowered the cost of care in the Capital Region for both Medicare and Medicaid – the two key populations on which it is focused. IHANY was recently singled out by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) that had a positive impact on patient care and Medicare savings in 2020.
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“The success of IHANY – through improved clinical integration, collaboration and shared accountability – demonstrates the power of regional health care organizations working together, ” said Reed. “The realization of better patient care through this collaborative model reinforces how a deeper relationship between St. Peter’s and Ellis will yield even better results in the future.”
SPHP and Ellis announced in October 2020 they had signed a letter of intent to examine the joining of both health care systems. Both the MSA and PTA are steps toward that long-term vision of a full affiliation. These collaborative agreements between both parties are designed to work in tandem to preserve quality health care services in Schenectady and surrounding areas by addressing significant financial challenges at Ellis Medicine—which are exacerbated by the departure of providers from the community.
With a full affiliation as part of the vision years down the road, Ellis Medicine is continuing its public outreach campaign to educate the community on its collaborations with SPHP, gather public input, and hear any concerns.
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“We will continue to engage medical leaders and physicians, as well as a range of other community members, to ensure we hear a variety of perspectives, ” said Milton. “We understand the importance of these affiliation discussions to everyone who relies on Ellis Medicine for care and are confident the community will see this is the right decision to enhance and increase access to care for years to come.”SCHENECTADY — During the dangerous and hugely disruptive COVID-19 pandemic, Ellis Medicine is in the fortuitous position of having a chief medical officer who has been fighting germs for a third of a century.
Dr. David Liebers joined Ellis Hospital in 1987 as an infectious disease specialist and still retains a small caseload today despite his administrative duties and his teaching role at Albany Medical Center.
A dozen Capital Region hospitals formed a partnership in mid-March to face the crisis as a team. When the leaders gather to update the news media on the situation, they defer technical questions to Liebers. His knowledge and experience are valuable, and they are in short supply, for not many young doctors choose infectious diseases as their career path.
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Liebers was born in Brooklyn, lived in the Bronx as a young child and moved to Schenectady when he was 5. He’s now 63 and a Niskayuna resident; he and his wife, Bonnie, have three grown children.
A: Family tradition, interest in science and nature. My dad is a retired oral surgeon. He worked here at Ellis in the years when we were a trauma center and he would let me join in on some surgical things in the office. So I had a lot of exposure to medical stuff growing up. My grandfather was a dentist as well.
A: In medical school I was always interested in infectious diseases, interested in the interplay between environment and disease. The wide variety of infectious diseases, the geographic variety of things depending on where you lived and I think the acute nature of infectious disease — the fact that you could with a proper diagnosis impact things very appropriately. So it continued through my residency and I decided to pursue a fellowship in that.
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A: Absolutely, and it is disappointing. The field of infectious diseases is one that’s greatly relied on by health care systems but you’re right: It’s a cognitive speciality, it does not have a “procedure” and the field has been wanting for new blood over the past maybe even 10 years. In recent times, the fact that the American medical student is saddled with huge amounts of debt, to go into a field like family medicine, pediatrics or infectious diseases is less attractive because you’re not going to earn the kind of incomes that other specialties do. Even the best programs are not filling, and we’ve had close to a 50 percent decline in the number of individuals going into that field. Right now we have a tremendous community shortage of infectious disease [specialists] in the Capital Region.
Q: Has there been anything in your career that has been a dangerous foe but has evolved over years instead of weeks?
A: I think in terms of danger and uncertainty and anxiety, the onset of AIDS. I started medical school in 1978, so that coincided, though we didn’t know it at the time. By the time I became an infectious disease fellow, AIDS had really exploded, particularly here in New York state. There was a great deal of anxiety. We knew that blood and body fluids transmitted the infection. At the time there was no treatment and HIV was considered a slow but certain death sentence.
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A: I don’t think so, no. This is an easily transmitted virus related to the common cold virus that produces severe infection and severe clinical disease in a pretty high percentage of people. Obviously the societal impact has been unprecedented in my lifetime and probably, in some respects, in this country’s lifetime.
A: I think this is the kind of thing that was always feared. We had the H1N1 Spanish Flu in 1918, which probably for different reasons had a lot of death and a lot of societal impact without overwhelming a medical system that was
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