BY BARBARA PINCKNEY
Cathy Homkey is at the center of healthcare
in the North Country.
Homkey, 54, is CEO of the Adirondack
Health Institute, a Glens Falls-based
consortium of about 80 providers and
other stakeholders in nine counties. AHI
is a joint venture of Glens Falls Hospital,
Saranac Lake-based Adirondack Health,
Hudson Headwaters Health Network and
Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in
Plattsburgh.
As CEO, Homkey oversees a budget of
$4.5 million and 46 employees–a number
she expects to reach 70 by the end of 2015.
She also provides strategic leadership for
AHI’s many initiatives, which center on
improving population health in the North
Country through the coordination of community
resources and new forms of care,
such as the Patient-Centered Medical
Home and Health Home models, which
reward providers for quality and efficiency.
At the moment, the institute is a administering
a $2 million grant as a Performing
Provider System under the state’s Delivery
Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP)
program, a $6 billion attempt to improve
population health while reducing Medicaid
costs. Much of those funds will find their
way to other community organizations AHI
will be partnering with.
“AHI is the hub, working to connect all
the dots as we transform the healthcare
delivery system,” Homkey said. “We make
a difference, and that is really where my
passion lies.”
Homkey, a native of Queensbury, has
been in her current role since 2011, but
has nearly 20 years of experience in the
healthcare field It all started, she said, because she was
looking for the best way to use the business
degree she earned at Trinity College
in Burlington, Vt. She started in public
accounting, working at times with health
care clients. That led to an opportunity
as finance director with a primary care
network. She then took her skills to a
health insurer, and in 2005 joined the Upper
Hudson Primary Care Consortium, the
forerunner to AHI.
She has worked to promote a positive
culture within the organization, which she
believes carries over into AHI’s relationships
with its community partners and
bolsters its reputation as a “neutral, trusted
convener and collaborator.”
Innovation is another thing Homkey
brings to her role.
“I like to think that I have a very creative
side and I bring a lot of that to my work,”
she said. “In a rural region you have to be
creative. You have to look at efficiencies
and economies of scale so I’m always trying
to solve that, to figure out how best
to create this unified vision and align all the resources across our region. I find it
intriguing to try to look for those solutions
and leverage the resources within our communities.”
The biggest challenge, she said, is
the rapid pace of change taking place in
healthcare.
“It is evolving by the minute, by the hour,
by the week,” she said. “Partly because of
the Affordable Care Act, we are asking a lot
of patients and providers and we are really
starting to ask a lot of our community.”
The mother of three boys–two in college,
one in high school–admits that
finding work-life balance can be difficult
in a job like hers.
“Some days I enjoy the pace, some days
I am driven crazy by it,” she said.
In 2014, Homkey was appointed by Gov.
Andrew Cuomo to a one-year term on the
state Rural Health Council. She also serves
on the New York State Health Foundation
Community Advisory Committee and on the
boards of the Adirondack Region Chamber
of Commerce and Mountain Lake Children’s
Residence Inc. in Lake Place.
Photo Courtesy Adirondack Health Institute