Cayuga Health at Ithaca Mall to open at the end of March

Cayuga Health at Ithaca Mall is slated to open its doors to patients at the end of March, and cardiology will be the first practice to be fully moved in, said Jeffrey Penoyer, chief operating officer for Cayuga Health Associates, while giving a recent tour of the facility.

There are 22 exam rooms in the cardiology unit, but that is just a fraction of what will be available.

“We are in the process of integrating five of our practices into this location,” Penoyer said.

The 40 Catherwood Rd. location, which was formerly The Bon-Ton, spans about 60,000 square feet of the Shops at the Ithaca Mall. Cardiology is expected to open on March 25, followed by the lab and a residency clinic, then primary care and rheumatology.

The new cardiology practice will consolidate Cayuga Heart and Vascular Center, formerly at Triphammer Road and Island Health and Fitness. Cayuga Primary Care, formerly located on Brentwood Drive and Trumansburg Road, is expected to commence April 8, as is the Cayuga Rheumatology practice, formerly located at Community Corners.

Consolidating several practices into one location allows for more collaboration among caregivers, Penoyer said.

“Our staff needs to be cared for, and they sometimes get sick or have reasons they can’t be here,” added Melissa Tourtellotte, vice president of marketing and communications at Cayuga Health. “And it makes juggling those situations easier by having a number of staff in one location, rather than just trying to staff smaller locations throughout the community.”

The project was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the mall parking lot was the site of drive-through COVID testing, Penoyer said.

“That was when the idea first started, thinking about how we can consolidate more services,” he said. “This is on one of the busier bus routes that we have in Tompkins County, and so this is accessible for a lot of patients as well, which is part of the reason we put the COVID testing site here.”

With a staff entrance/exit that opens directly to the mall food court, Cayuga Health employees will have a number of dining options every day without having to step outside. Penoyer said that the stores at the mall, as well as the restaurants, are likely to see a boost in business from the additional foot traffic. 

This includes Cayuga Medical Equipment, which sells a wide range of equipment such as motorized scooters, walkers, canes, therapy aids, orthopedic supplies and wheelchairs.

Patients can stop by after their appointment and find items they may need to be as independent as possible just steps away. The store also takes most medical insurance, one store employee noted during the tour.

Renovating a former retail space does come with some unique challenges, Penoyer said.

“Taking a space that was formerly a department store without a lot of windows, we wanted to bring some more natural light into the space,” Penoyer said, “so we did add windows across the front to help bring that natural light into the waiting area.”

There are also many strategically placed skylights, and in areas where windows are not possible, state-of-the-art light fixtures are set on a timer to change the hue of the lighting based on the time of day.

Two new cardiologists will be joining Cayuga Health in September of this year, Penoyer said. “We are continuing to recruit and expand our cardiology services in the community,” he added.

Like the recently opened Cayuga Park Medical Building located off of Route 13 near Greenstar Food Co+op, the new medical offices feature an “on-stage, off-stage” theme. This means patients will not have to walk through clinical space where there are conversations happening about patients.

“It protects the privacy of the patients, and it creates a more calming and relaxed atmosphere for patients, so they can walk down the hall into an exam room without really encountering the hustle and bustle of care that’s going on,” Penoyer said.

The lab service center is accessible from the front of the building.

“It is also the center of everything because as patients leave for their appointments, coming from cardiology or primary care, we navigate all of our patients past the lab, so you can’t miss getting your labs done on your way out of your primary care or cardiology appointment, which is great,” Penoyer said.

There is some undeveloped space surrounding the newly built-out location. “The goal is that we would hope to consolidate more health care services into the mall,” Penoyer said.

Penoyer said Cayuga Health expects to add three new primary care providers to the new location by fall of 2024.

“We’ll add at least two new physicians and at least one advanced practice provider,” he said. “It’s a big investment in primary care in this community, especially during a time when it’s really hard to recruit primary care providers.”

With an internal medicine residency clinic located at the mall site as well, Cayuga Health is helping to address the shortage of primary care services in Tompkins County.

“We’ve been very successful, in our two graduating classes, in recruiting primary care providers to stay with us to continue care in our community,” Penoyer said, adding that currently Cayuga Health has 30 residents, with around 10 scheduled to graduate this year.