Village Care of New York: It Takes a Village
Home Care
Written by Eric Slack   
Saturday, 01 December 2007
Village Care of New York: It Takes a Village - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
President and CEO Arthur Webb’s team responds to people in need, bringing profits—and hope—to Manhattan.
In the modern medicinal minefield, ensuring quality care and business growth is a never-ending task. For providers like Village Care of New York, success may not have come easy, but neither was it a fluke.

“I went back and looked at the minutes for the past three decades, and they read like the DNA of the organization,” said Arthur Webb, president and CEO of Village Care for the last 14 years. “Since our founding, our mission has been the same. We’ve grown because the people we serve need these services, and we’re guided by those people.”

Village Care of New York: It Takes a Village - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Arthur Webb, President and CEO
Village Care is a nonprofit provider specializing in seniors and people living with AIDS. It was created after the owner of the then for-profit Village Nursing Home in Greenwich Village absconded, abandoning more than 300 seniors in 1976. In response, a neighborhood group purchased the building. This act spawned a business that has never lost sight of its mission, even as it evolved. Which is why once the AIDS crisis hit the community, Village Care saw an opportunity to reach out to another needy group.

In the mid 1980s, the company positioned itself as one of the early pioneers for New Yorkers living with AIDS. In 1988, it established the first AIDS day-treatment program in the US, now the national model. In 1995, Village Care opened the largest AIDS nursing home in the world, the $72 million, 209-bed Rivington House. These investments made Village Care a leader in the field and a beacon of hope.

“Our city was losing wonderful and talented people. We are patient centered and we work to make sure these people are taken care of,” said Webb. “Before opening Rivington, in the late 1980s we started a unique home care agency that dealt with AIDS only, and we’re still one of the few AIDS-specific home care agencies in the state.”

Getting support
Speaking of the state, more than 97% of Village Care’s funding comes from government sources. Webb’s 18 years experience as a public official before coming to Village Care helps the company navigate bureaucracies. It does bring in donations, including a Carnegie Corporation grant of $50,000, which was allocated from a larger gift to Carnegie by New York’s Mayor Bloomberg. But in all, it only raises about $700,000 a year. Because of this dependence on state and federal funding, Webb’s team is under the constant pressure of various government standards.

“There is virtually nothing we do that isn’t licensed or surveyed by government entities. So we closely maintain our fiscal reporting, making sure we comply with all the regulations, while maintaining the level of quality care that is being demanded more and more by government,” Webb said. “Working in a world dominated by government means you have to be extremely patient and persistent because, by their very nature, bureaucracies tend to be slow in making decisions.”

And while Village Care is navigating various government agencies, it is also at work expanding its services. Recently, it added its own pharmacy and primary care practice. Webb considers having its own pharmacy part of quality control, while building the PCP network was designed to increase the continuity of care.

“We’ve gotten our medication costs under control without compromising quality. Running it ourselves means we can do medication studies, so our pharmacy is providing what we call pharmacological reports,” Webb said, adding that Village Care also allocates resources to other internal and external research programs. “As for primary care, we felt the ability to monitor patient status and conditions would be better if we ran our own PCP network; that’s our strategic position.”

Other Village Care investments include beta testing an electronic medical record for long-term care providers, with testing driven by a for-profit software company that Village Care created in 2001. The company currently operates a managed care program for the frail and chronically ill and plans to purchase property for an assisted
living program for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Webb says that Village Care plans to spend an additional $70 million in improvements and expansion of the latter two programs over the next six years.

Changing the rules
Moving forward, Village Care plans to build a new nursing home in Manhattan, one of the first such projects on the island in the last 30 years. When completed, this $42 million project will take a new approach to nursing home care. Sixty-five percent of the beds will provide short-term care, with the intention of turning over the beds every 30 days. The floors will be small, limited to 21 people a floor, with 56% of the rooms completely private. And there will be no nursing stations, making the facility feel less like a nursing home. Webb believes this commitment to innovation helps Village Care earn its reputation.

“There’s a movement toward a person-centered culture in the nursing home world. We’re changing the name from Village Nursing Home to Village Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing to reflect its new purpose, which is to provide shorter care,” Webb said. “This is one of the most expensive places in the world to build. Getting this project done and making it person-centered in a high-rent district in the West Village is a real trick.”

Although charity is at the heart of everything it does, Village Care is run with an understanding of the demands of the industry. Medicine is more competitive now than ever, so if a provider believes its services benefit the community, it needs the right business plan to ensure its viability. Part of this involves partnerships, marketing, and staffing strategies. Webb believes Village Care has been proactive on all fronts.

“We have what we call liaison nurses in certain key hospitals working with discharge planners to facilitate referrals. With staffing, we use simple logic—a highly satisfied customer is totally dependent on having a highly satisfied employee,” said Webb, who added that Village Care works on respect and recognition of its employees constantly. “And with the competition even among nonprofits, branding is important. People in need of care, as well as potential employees and donors, need to hear about what we are doing. Getting the message out helps us build more relationships.”
 
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