Cayuga Med bariatric staff celebrate recent accreditation

Last month, Cayuga Medical Center (CMC) announced that its Cayuga Center for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery had achieved accreditation as a Comprehensive Center from the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP). Surgeons and patients in bariatrics at CMC said the accreditation is well-earned and helps to highlight the dedication of CMC’s staff.

The MBSAQIP is a joint quality program of the American College of Surgeons (facs.org) and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (asmbs.org). Its standards, titled Optimal Resources for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, ensure that “metabolic and bariatric patients receive multidisciplinary medical care, which improves patient outcomes and long-term success,” according to a recent press release.

According to Cayuga Health, the number of people in the U.S. experiencing obesity continues to rise. Obesity increases the risk of morbidity and mortality, mostly due to the diseases and conditions that are often coupled with it like diabetes or heart disease. Metabolic and bariatric surgery can reduce these related conditions and often help patients live longer, happier lives.

To earn MBSAQIP accreditation, the Cayuga Center for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery had to meet several criteria regarding staff, training, facility infrastructure and patient care pathways.

“Our Bariatric Center continues to do amazing work, and I am honored to have such highly skilled, board-certified surgeons at Cayuga Medical Center,” said Dr. Martin Stallone, CEO of Cayuga Health, in the release. “The Cayuga Center for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery’s team of professionals provide our patients with quicker recovery time from their surgery. They also provide patient confidence by working across our health systems disciplines, allowing patients to reach their potential throughout their entire weight loss journey.”

The Cayuga Center for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery is headed by medical director and bariatric surgeon Dr. Brian Bollo, who described what sets CMC’s bariatric center apart.

“Our center really offers the registered dieticians as well as the nonsurgical staff providers and surgical providers all at one house,” he said. “Our clinic has the dietitians that help with our surgical weight loss and even our nonsurgical medical weight loss that we offer here. … We’re treating the whole patient. And so, what I think is great about our program is that you really get to know my office, and you’re not just coming in, seeing a surgeon that’s booking surgery for weight loss only and not taking a look at the whole picture.”

Bollo added that this accreditation goes a long way to help patients throughout the region get the best bariatric care possible.

“It allows us to go out and tell patients and the population that we’ve met this rigorous criteria and we’re here to serve them,” he said. “The second thing is our outcomes are going to be studied and looked at by all the major players within the weight loss community and the weight loss surgery community. And so, our outcomes become part of the whole. And what that does is that kind of puts us in that group of surgeons and institutions across the country who are trying to get the best outcomes.”

Bollo said that while the accreditation is “a nice feather in our cap,” staff weren’t surprised. After all, “we’ve been doing weight loss surgery here for almost 20 years, and we really have a good product,” he said. And patients can testify to that, as one bariatric patient — CMC nurse Marissa Reigle — explained.

“I started with their weight loss program where they go through what kind of food you struggle with and how to have healthier lifestyle,” she said. “And I’d actually been meeting with people on and off for a couple years, and I lost a little bit of weight through just having counseling sessions and understanding a little bit more about food addiction and how it can affect your life, going through that kind of thing with them. And then, it became a little bit more apparent with my health issues that having a tool to lose the weight a little faster was going to be pretty important for my overall health. That’s when I started shifting my gear to thinking about weight loss surgery.”

CMC staff helped Reigle prepare for her surgery and provided plenty of guidance after the surgery as well, ensuring that she would be successful in her weight loss goals.

“They’re experts in the care that they provide, and they go above and beyond to make sure you get the care that you need, in particular,” she said. “One of the things I had prior to surgery was binge eating disorder, and I remember once or twice saying, ‘OK, I have tons of chips and Oreos in front of me — I need to not do this’ and actually contacting them and being like, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ And they helped me work through that. … They care about you as a person and not just you as a patient.”

Though it hasn’t been long since Reigle’s surgery, she’s already noticed a big difference in her quality of life.

“I can do things that I couldn’t do,” she said. “I was rather big, so doing amusement park rides was out of the question. And everyone was like, ‘Oh, I bet you can’t do that,’ like, I don’t know, balance on a log. And I’d be scared to do it because I was so overweight and if I fell, I would be more likely to hurt myself and I was just not comfortable moving in my body. But since the surgery, since the weight loss, I can do things like that. I can interact more with family and friends.”

Reigle speaks very highly of her experience at CMC, so much so that she even participated in an ad campaign for CMC’s bariatric services to get the word out.

“I hope that they can do this for more and more people and be able to change people and change their lives to be happier and to be more what they envision,” she said. “I never envisioned getting where I was getting, and I didn’t quite know how to make my life around that. And I feel like the more they can touch, the more they can reach, the more they can help.”

CMC expects to reach even more people in the new year, Bollo said. He explained that the pandemic has caused many residents to avoid their doctors in general, including for issues related to obesity, even as obesity increases a person’s risk of experiencing severe COVID-19 symptoms.

“I see, in 2022, people going and getting back to a normal life, and say, ‘Hey, it’s time for me to treat this,’” he said. “I’m expecting a real increase in our patients in 2022. And I think that’s going to be both because people are tired of sitting at home and they want to seek out medical care. Also, I think there is going to be this added knowledge of knowing that the pandemic has certainly affected our obese U.S. population worse.”

To learn more about CMC’s bariatric offerings, visit cayugamed.org/services-2/weight-loss.

Jessica Wickham is the managing editor of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to them at editorial@vizellamedia.com.