Ithaca College partners with Cayuga Health for campus health services

ITHACA, N.Y. — Ithaca College and Cayuga Health System (CHS) have partnered to bring health-care services to students as the college’s student health services officially becomes part of the CHS network beginning Aug. 15. Student health services will become Cayuga Health at Ithaca College (IC) at that time.

“This partnership will allow Ithaca College to benefit from the strengths of a system that focuses on healthcare as its primary mission while we continue to focus on our core educational mission,” Bonnie Prunty, VP for student affairs and campus life, said in an announcement on the college’s website.

Benefits to students include extended service hours, a streamlined referral process for specialist care, access to a wider range of services, and an integrated behavioral-health model that includes two behavioral-health consultants on-site and one remote behavioral health/collaborative care manager. The college’s Center for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), which is not part of Cayuga Health, continues to provide mental-health counseling.

Cayuga Health played a significant role at Ithaca College during its reopening efforts following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and currently has formal relationships with the college’s sports medicine, physical therapy, and physician-assistant programs. The new partnership creates a platform for further collaborations in both health services and student learning experiences, the organizations contend.

The college requires students are covered by a health-insurance plan and Cayuga Health will bill their insurance for services received. In the past, the college subsidized the entire cost of services.

Cayuga Health operates the Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, Schuyler Hospital in Montour Falls, the multispecialty group Cayuga Medical Associates, and the Cayuga Health Partners network of more than 400 providers. Cayuga Health employs about 2,500 people and has affiliations with major medical centers including the Rochester Heart Institute, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

With an enrollment of 5,400 undergraduate and graduate students, Ithaca College offers 90 majors through its business, music, communications, humanities and sciences, and health sciences and human performance schools.