From left, Patterson, Atzrott and Batulis listen to Chamber President John D'Ambrosio

WALLKILL – A host of Orange County healthcare administrators spoke to the Orange County Chamber of Commerce Tuesday morning to share in the development of their individual facilities as well as thoughts on the impacts of healthcare reform on their businesses.

The three CEOs were Allan Atzrott of St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital, Scott Batulis of the new Orange Regional Medical Center and Phillip Patterson of Bon Secours Charity Health System.

Each spoke on the growth and development of his own hospital(s) and the role the government will play in how effective healthcare will fare in the coming years.

Atzrott addressed stateside medical tribulations, mentioning that “25 hospitals have closed in southern New York since 2008.” He cited a hospital evaluation report stating that “revenue is growing at the slowest rate in 21 years,” with 20 percent of the over 400 surveyed hospitals operating at a deficit and 63 percent with “zero to five percent margins.”

Atzrott said this will become even more pronounced once healthcare reform takes away much of the reimbursement physicians receive from Medicare. New York State also has the most expensive Medicaid program in the nation, which he said will lead to further cuts.

He punctuated his position by pointing to a business research study that showed a drop of 61,200 healthcare job postings in July.

“Until we get the government to be in sync with what is going on with the rest of the world, you need to be concerned about what healthcare reform really means: it means spending less money and providing more difficult access to care,” he said.

St. Luke’s has seen considerable development, nonetheless this year. The hospital completed a $125 million project that included the construction of a parking garage in Newburgh, renovations to “nearly every patient room, the pharmacy, cafeteria and laboratory,” and Hollie’s Garden, a meditation and healing area in their Littman Cancer Center in Cornwall.

Batulis, who heads the newly completed ORMC, knows much of hospital development, though he’s only held his post five of the last 10 years when the project began. The 383-room facility, which is 50 percent larger than Horton and Arden Hill together, is just beginning to realize its potential, he said.

“We have an opportunity to do whatever comes our way; we have unlimited potential. We want to do a better job in pediatrics, more work in heart care, more work in all services critical to the community,” said Batulis.

Though he wasn’t as critical of healthcare reform as Atzrott, Batulis did bemoan the housing market and its role in impeding the acquisition of management candidates.

“We employ over 3,000 full-time people. We recruit around the nation and we’ve found that the housing market has really impacted mobility of people to move around. It really is impacting people’s ability to take jobs, to move up and to get everybody in the right spot,” he said.

Philip Patterson, CEO of Bon Secours Charity Health System, which runs a community hospital in Port Jervis, St. Anthony’s in Warwick and Good Samaritan in Suffern, said migration was working in Orange County’s favor.

“The population growth projections still show Orange County as being the largest growth community inside New York State,” he said, claiming that it should see just fewer than 10 percent more inhabitants over the next three years, which he says comes out to about 16 or 17 thousand more people.

A more prescient concern is the aging population, according to Patterson, who said it will become an increasingly expensive issue to address. “Right now one in every five citizens will be over the age of 70 by 2030. The aging baby boomers will radically change the way healthcare is delivered in the US and it has to because of the cost associated with that age bracket,” he said, adding that doctors and nurses are also aging at a faster rate than they’re being replenished.