CAZENOVIA — Laboratory Alliance of Central New York, LLC is watching the number of people walking in the door of a patient-service center it recently opened in Cazenovia. “Every week we’re looking at patient volumes,” says Anne Marie Mullin, senior vice president of Laboratory Alliance, which is based in suite 300 at 1304 Buckley Road […]
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CAZENOVIA — Laboratory Alliance of Central New York, LLC is watching the number of people walking in the door of a patient-service center it recently opened in Cazenovia.
“Every week we’re looking at patient volumes,” says Anne Marie Mullin, senior vice president of Laboratory Alliance, which is based in suite 300 at 1304 Buckley Road in Salina and provides laboratory testing for nearly a million patients per year. “As we get more people, we’re always monitoring wait times of patients. As we see those wait times increase, we may add a receptionist full time, a second phlebotomist.”
Laboratory Alliance does not know if or when staffing increases will be necessary at the patient-service center. One phlebotomist currently works there.
The center opened at the beginning of October at 132 1/2 Albany St. Laboratory Alliance leases about 1,000 square feet of space there from Atwells Mill, LLC.
The location is the 11th patient-service center Laboratory Alliance operates in Central New York. It was also a return to Cazenovia for the independent, for-profit lab company that is jointly owned by Crouse Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center, and Upstate University Hospital’s Community Campus.
Laboratory Alliance previously operated a patient-service center in the Cazenovia area on Chenango Street, Mullin says. But it vacated that location to give St. Joseph’s Heritage Family Medicine Center at Cazenovia more space. That family practice recently relocated to 132 1/2 Albany St., drawing Laboratory Alliance back into Cazenovia, Mullin says.
“It was at least three years, maybe four since the previous Cazenovia location closed,” she says. “We gave up that location but didn’t look to immediately identify a new piece of property for us because, in our business, the physicians are our referral source. Even though patients hold their insurance, and it’s their right to choose where they want to go to have their lab work done, so many people defer to their provider.”
About 15 to 20 patients are currently visiting the Cazenovia location per day at this point, according to Mullin. Laboratory Alliance is sending advertisements to Cazenovia residents and expects that number to grow.
Cazenovia is actually the second patient-service center Laboratory Alliance opened this year. On Aug. 1 it opened a location at the Madison-Irving Medical Center at 475 Irving Ave. in Syracuse.
That new patient-service center, which is also about 1,000 square feet, replaces two centers that closed around Crouse Hospital earlier this year, according to Mullin. Laboratory Alliance had centers at Crouse’s PromptCare at 739 Irving Ave. and the Crouse Testing Center at 725 Irving Ave. It closed those branches to give Crouse additional space.
“We couldn’t find any space in 725 or 739 Irving Ave.,” Mullin says. “So we looked in the vicinity and found the location at 475 Irving Ave. down the hill.”
The new Irving Avenue location has one employee and sees about 20 patients a day. Laboratory Alliance will add more employees to the center as more patients visit it, Mullin says.
Laboratory Alliance might not be done adding new patient-service centers this year, Mullin continues. It is looking at opening another location in Madison County by the end of December or sometime in January, although Mullin says she cannot share any more details about that possible expansion.
“It would mean we’ve set up three unbudgeted, unplanned-for patient-service centers in one year, which is remarkable,” she says. “I don’t think we’ve ever set up so many within such a short period of time. We’re looking at who’s sending patients to us, who wants to send patients to us, and we have to be responsive.”
Laboratory Alliance currently employs 440 people, up from about 430 a year ago. In addition to the 11 patient-service centers and its Salina headquarters, the lab company employs workers in rapid-response laboratories at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center, Crouse Hospital, and Upstate’s Community General Campus, as well as a 27,000-square-foot building it owns in Salina at 113 Innovation Lane that functions as its main laboratory.
Annual revenue at Laboratory Alliance is in “excess of” $50 million, Mullin says. Revenue growth is typically 5 percent each year, a rate she expects to continue in the future, she adds.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com