The Reporter: June 1995, Vol.6, No.3
CPMC West Side Hosts Grand Opening

A ribbon-cutting ceremony in May marked the grand opening of CPMC West Side, located at 21 W. 86th St. (between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue). The facility, hailed as a model for managed care delivery, opened late last fall to better serve the health care needs of Columbia University and Presbyterian Hospital employees who reside on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

"When I went down through the zip code list of employees who were eligible to join the University's managed care health plan, a little over 30 percent lived on the west side," recalls Jay Wexler, assistant vice president for health sciences and associate dean for clinical affairs administration, who spearheaded a team to establish CPMC West Side two years ago. "It was simply a matter of putting a pin on the map and saying, 'This is where we need to put a site.'"

Mr. Wexler and his colleagues began to scope out potential sites that contained about 4,000 square feet of space, were located on the first floor, and were easily accessible to transportation. After a six-month search, they found all that and more on the first floor of The Brewster, a New York City landmark building constructed in 1926 as a residential hotel. The Brewster is now an apartment house with first-floor commercial space.

"We were concerned about traffic patterns, too," Mr. Wexler says. "We wanted people to be able to get there easily by bus or subway. It's very convenient. We preserved the flavor of the building. We maintained all the stained glass, all the original oak woodwork on the inside."

With nine exam rooms and separate entrances and waiting areas for adults and children, the 3,900-square-foot outpatient facility offers primary care in medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology. Every physician at the facility is a P&S faculty member and an attending staff member at PH.

"It was designed and conceptualized to be cost-effective and cost-efficient by allowing for the sharing of staff and services. We're hopeful that it will serve as a template that can be repeated at other sites around the city as we continue to expand primary care managed care activity for the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center," Mr. Wexler says.

CPMC West Side is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. Weekend and evening hours are planned for the future. The phone number is 799-2818.