Oswego Health to use Excellus grant for primary care at Lakeview

OSWEGO, N.Y. — Oswego Health on Jan. 4 announced it will use a $10,000 Health and Wellness Award from Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Central New York’s largest health insurer, to support primary-care services at Lakeview.

A few days earlier, it said one if its intensive-care (ICU) nurses is now a certified rapid response health-care professional (CRRP), the first in the health-care system to obtain that designation.

Primary-care funding award

The Oswego Health Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Oswego Health, recently applied for funding to expand access to care, and Excellus selected the project.

Oswego Health describes itself as the largest nonprofit health-care system in Oswego County. 

“Our Health and Wellness Awards demonstrate a corporate commitment to supporting local organizations that share our mission as a nonprofit health plan,” Mark Muthumbi, regional president at Excellus, said in an Oswego Health news release. “These awards complement our existing grants and sponsorships with agencies that work to enhance quality of life, including health equity and health care access in upstate New York.”

Primary Care at Lakeview is a safety net clinic located within the Lobdell Center for Mental Health and Wellness at Lakeview. It’s located at 29 E. Cayuga St. in Oswego. 

The clinic accepts every patient that seeks care, “especially those that are overlooked, marginalized, and have severe, persistent mental illness,” Oswego Health said. The clinic works with each patient to develop an individualized plan,

Oswego Health currently has six primary care locations and employs 19 primary care providers throughout Oswego County. 

Before applying for the award, Oswego Health said it analyzed the community’s need for health-care services by conducting a community needs survey. Seventy-nine percent of the respondents reported that they travel outside the county for health-care services, Oswego Health said. 

Rapid-response certification

An ICU nurse at Oswego Health is the organization’s first employee to become a certified rapid response health-care professional (CRRP).

Registered nurse Kristopher Ferrara is also former emergency-medical services (EMS) professional and paramedic, per Oswego Health’s Jan. 2 announcement. 

Working in EMS for nearly 22 years and as a paramedic for 13, Ferrara decided to pursue a career as a registered nurse and now works in that capacity in Oswego Hospital’s intensive-care unit (ICU). 

Given his background, Oswego Health says Ferrara pursued training that would allow him to be “more effective” in rapid-response situations to help patients through a crisis. 

Oswego Health implemented a rapid-response team several years ago, but Ferrara is its first employee to become certified in the life-saving technique. 

As part of the training, Ferrara learned new clinical insights and critical thinking skills, along with an understanding how to “better spot the early signs of a clinically deteriorating patient.” Studies show that patients typically demonstrate signs of deterioration up to 12 hours before they go into arrest, Oswego Health noted. 

Ferrara this month is also starting work to earn his bachelor’s degree in nursing through the support of the Oswego Health tuition-assistance program as he hopes to focus more on palliative care in the future, the health-care system said.