Published by Provident Bank
Featured in PBNY Connect Magazine | February 2013
Seventeen years ago, when Hal Teitelbaum, M.D., J.D., M.B.A., surveyed the medical world in the Northeast, he knew he could make positive changes.
Dr. Teitelbaum found the rise of managed care increasingly hampering the physician/patient relationship, and, even more distressingly, found physicians were spending more time complaining about the system than working to improve it or working together to provide the best possible care for patients.
Today, his effort to change the system has blossomed into one of the fastest-growing medical practices in New York.
A Philosophy of Collaboration That Puts Patients First
Dr. Teitelbaum, who is Founder, Managing Partner, and CEO of Crystal Run Healthcare, headquartered in the town of Wallkill in Orange County, was born in Queens and grew up on Long Island. His parents—and cultural events during his youth in the 1960s— instilled in him a desire to do good for others; he eventually channeled that desire into medicine as an internist and hematologist/oncologist.
After spending several years in teaching, clinical care, and research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, Dr. Teitelbaum left academic medicine to devote himself entirely to patient care. He settled in Orange County in 1982 and practiced alone for a couple of years until a friend and colleague from Memorial Sloan-Kettering joined him.
Dr. Teitelbaum found the rise of managed care increasingly hampering the physician/patient relationship, and, even more distressingly, found physicians were spending more time complaining about the system than working to improve it or working together to provide the best possible care for patients.
Today, his effort to change the system has blossomed into one of the fastest-growing medical practices in New York.
By the mid-1990s, Dr. Teitelbaum was fed up with the problems he perceived in health care.
“I had an ‘I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore’ moment in which I realized physicians should be taking leading roles in the healthcare system instead of whining about insurance and bureaucracies,” he says. “Crystal Run Healthcare was born out of the philosophy that committed, dedicated physicians with real interest in improving the healthcare system should be active participants in the system.”
On January 1, 1996, the six-physician practice opened its doors on Crystal Run Road in Wallkill. Today, Crystal Run Healthcare features more than 300 providers, including more than 250 physicians representing more than 40 specialties, operating 15 facilities in Orange and Sullivan counties and serving approximately 1 million patient visits per year.
“Years ago, we decided Crystal Run Healthcare would grow in size, scope, and geography and become unique based on quality and service excellence,” Dr. Teitelbaum says. “We wanted to become an unavoidable force in health care that would best serve our patients and our communities. We still hold ourselves to those goals and values today.”
Leading the Present, Embracing the Future
Many noteworthy achievements place Crystal Run Healthcare as a leader in the trends that are reshaping medicine, such as accountable care and the patient-centered medical home. These honors include:
- Accreditation by The Joint Commission in 2006, a first for a private medical practice in New York
- Application for designation as a National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Accountable Care Organization (ACO), one of the first six medical entities in the country to apply as ”early adopter“
- Certification as a Level 3 Patient-Centered Medical Home— the highest level available—by NCQA
- Participation in the Medicare Shared Savings/ACO Program, one of the first 27 medical entities nationwide to do so
- Use of electronic health records since 1999
Dr. Teitelbaum looks forward to an exciting future for Crystal Run Healthcare—one that Provident Bank will feel privileged to help facilitate (see “A Fruitful Relationship”).
“I anticipate the practice doubling, perhaps even quadrupling, its number of physicians, as well as expanding into additional counties within the next three to five years,” he says. “Our philosophy of delivering health care promises to gain more and more momentum in the years to come.”
This momentum is evident by our recent Grand Opening of Crystal Run Healthcare’s newest location on Ronald Regan Blvd. in Warwick, an approximate 12,000-square-foot location providing family practice and surgery, orthopedics, OB/GYN, and pediatric services with two additional locations currently being developed in Middletown (Administrative Offices) and Monroe.
A Fruitful Relationship
In late 2009, soon after Crystal Run Healthcare had opened a 130,000-square-foot medical office building on Crystal Run Road in Wallkill, its Founder, Managing Partner, and CEO Hal Teitelbaum, M.D., J.D., M.B.A., took what turned out to be some excellent advice from an acquaintance: He called Provident Bank about securing funding for the building’s ambulatory surgery center.
“Out of the blue, this individual told me that if I ever needed a bank that was flexible and understood the needs of local businesses, I should turn to Provident Bank,” Dr. Teitelbaum says. “Although the country was still in a recession, the Bank was excited about working with a successful regional business like Crystal Run Healthcare. For more than three years, we have turned to the Bank to finance projects and purchases of medical equipment. Some banks, particularly in the current credit environment, are quick to reject new ideas. Provident Bank, by contrast, is always flexible and interested in finding solutions when we’re interested in growing, both for our own sake and the community’s. Crystal Run Healthcare is fortunate to work with Provident Bank.”
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