Health Care in Tompkins County
Communities that grow and prosper manage to retain their talented young adults while attracting people from the outside, such as young families, professionals, artists, business people and entrepreneurs, and seniors. A strong medical center, high-quality school system, and thriving business and cultural environments are all required to promote this kind of regional vitality. In its role as the region’s primary health-care facility, Cayuga Medical Center (www.cayugamed.org) remains committed to investing in Tompkins County, to increase the breadth of local health-care services. In the last year the medical center has honored this commitment with continued progress on its five-year physical-plant renovation, expansion of services, and purchase of new equipment.
In December 2006, Cayuga Medical Center opened a new $21 million, 40,000 square-foot critical care facility housing a state-of-the-art Emergency Department and Intensive/Cardiac Care Unit. This facility was built in accordance with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines for green building. The medical center continued the expansion of its Imaging Services Department, which has been ranked by the Business Journal of Central New York as one of the most comprehensive providers of imaging services in the region, offering all of the modalities found in major medical centers. Among the most notable recent enhancements are digital mammography, digital ultrasound, interventional CT angiography, and both digital and portable bone-density scanning.
Located in a state-of-the-art facility that opened in 2005, Cayuga Medical Center Radiation Medicine has just brought respiratory gating on line. This is a leading-edge technology that enables radiologists to focus even more precisely on tumor sites and appreciably reduces the potential impact of radiation on adjacent healthy tissue. As a premier affiliate of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Cayuga Medical Center offers a level of cancer care that is typically found only in major medical centers.
This year has also seen growth in local cardiac care services. An affiliate of the Rochester Heart Institute (one of the country’s Top Ten cardiac programs) Cayuga Medical Center is now offering surgery for Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICD) in its new Cardiac Catheterization facility. In keeping with its dual responsibility to provide acute care and to improve the long-term health of area residents, Cayuga Medical Center expanded programs and services at the Island Health Center, home to Island Health and Fitness. Relocation of the Department of Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine to the Island Health Center enabled rehabilitation specialists to more effectively realize the medical center’s physical-therapy-to-fitness model of medical rehabilitation.
The medical center launched the Cayuga Center for Healthy Living (CCHL) at the Island Health Center in 2007. This program provides guidance and support for people with chronic health problems related to lifestyle risk factors. Cardiovascular rehabilitation is also available now through the CCHL to provide cardiac patients with monitored exercise and to help them learn how to reduce their risk for future cardiac events.
Cayuga Medical Center has a century-long history of investing in the community. Today the medical center is a 200-bed regional medical center affiliated with many prestigious health-care organizations including Cornell University's Weill Medical College, the Rochester Heart Institute at Rochester General Hospital, and Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY.