The health care industry is on the cusp of fundamental change. The notion of a single hospital that offers all the necessary services for its immediate community is shifting to one of cooperation with nearby institutions to provide a range of care over a swath of geography. It’s people like Andrew Manzer ’95 who are helping transform health care to better serve the social and economic realities of the 21st century.

When Manzer stepped into the role of president at Schuyler Hospital in Montour Falls, New York, in 2011, the institution was struggling with its finances and reputation. Manzer and other members of the hospital’s leadership knew long-term survival meant finding an institution to team up with. Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca fit the prescription.

“They understood what we were asking for was truly a partner and not a takeover—not somebody to fix the hospital for us because we couldn’t,” says Manzer, who majored in health services administration at IC. “[We wanted] a partner that would help us bring the resources and talent to bear in this community to deliver a higher level of care and pull the hospital back on its feet.”

In late 2011 the two hospitals began “dating,” as Manzer described it, sharing certain clinical resources like orthopedics. It was a game-changer, he says, because it allowed Schuyler Hospital to offer clinical services that the small hospital had trouble maintaining on its own. By 2014 the two hospitals decided to further the relationship and become more integrated.

“We started to find a lot of opportunities where we could do more together than we could individually,” says Manzer. At the end of 2014 the two hospitals—both still in operation—formally merged into the Cayuga Health System. Manzer was named vice president. There is a major benefit to the formation of this regional network: it creates enough work to justify the expense of growing programs and physician teams, such as cardiology, thus expanding the scope of services available to the communities both hospitals serve.

The impact at Schuyler has been obvious and positive. The finances of the hospital and its reputation in the community have both improved dramatically, and Manzer says even the employees—from support staff to doctors—walk around with a renewed sense of pride in their work. The hospital also received several awards of recognition at the national and state level.

The shift at Schuyler Hospital is the emerging paradigm, according to Manzer. The focus on specific locations for services (the “bricks-and-mortar” approach) is fading as more emphasis is put on ensuring needed services are provided somewhere within the regional health care network.

“I think the traditional hospital over the next 10 to 20 years won’t be known to future generations as ‘the hospital’ as we think of it today. It’s an access point,” Manzer says. “These businesses are really about people, systems, networks of care—and the people who deliver it.” Manzer calls the success at Schuyler Hospital a tremendous team effort. And he says he learned the true value of teamwork as a JV and practice squad player during Jim Butterfield’s final three years as football coach at IC. The lessons he learned about working with others have proved invaluable professionally and personally – he is raising two daughters with his wife, Michele. And those lessons will continue to serve him as he helps build a modern health care system.

“I think we’re the generation that gets to fix it and build a new model that will take care of our kids and grandkids,” he says. “And that’s pretty exciting.”