Kaleida Health


Kaleida Health, founded in 1998, is a not-for-profit healthcare network that manages five hospitals in the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area.

Facilities

Kaleida Health runs the Buffalo General Medical Center, a hospital on the premises of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. It was founded on its current site in the 19th century and has undergone expansions ever since, including one in the 1986 that added a 16-story tower to the main complex. The hospital had 24,000 inpatient visits in 2016. The interior lobby was remodeled, and the exterior of the building was repainted in 2017 to match the color scheme of newer facilities on the campus, at a cost of $2 million.
Kaleida also runs the John R. Oishei Children's Hospital, a children's hospital that is also at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. It opened in November 2017 and cost $270 million to build. There are 185 beds, including 64 neonatal units, fourteen operating rooms, an indoor garden, and skyway connections to neighboring Buffalo General Hospital and Conventus. The hospital broke ground in 2015 and was designed by Shepley Bulfinch and built by Turner Construction.
Kaleida and the State University of New York at Buffalo jointly built the Gates Vascular Institute building which was completed in 2012; the lower floors house a clinical facility run by Kaleida that includes an emergency room, outpatient, inpatient, and medical imaging facilities.
As of 2017 Kaleida Health oversees Upper Allegheny Health System, which comprises Brooks Memorial Hospital, Lakeshore Hospital, Olean General, Bradford Regional Medical Center, and Cuba Memorial Hospital.

Patient Safety Concerns

A report produced by Consumer Reports in July 2015 on the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections gave Kaleida hospitals a below average ranking in 4 of the report's 5 categories. The ranking was based on hospital-reported data provided to federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between October 2013 and September 2014.

Kaleida Health was also cited by Medicare for having high rates of infections and other patient-safety problems. The Hospital Acquired Conditions Reduction Program, which was created as part of the Affordable Care Act, seeks to incentivize hospitals to improve patient safety by measuring rates of hospital-acquired infection and other patient safety metrics and then penalizing hospitals that perform poorly. As a result of this program Kaleida Health has been penalized more than $1 million in 2016 through reduced Medicare payments.