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Community health centers: your medical home
By David B. Willard
President, Board of Directors
Outer Cape Health Services, Inc. and
Vice President, Community Relations
Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank
Outer Cape Health Services is part of a proud tradition of accessible, affordable, culturally appropriate primary medical care that goes back to the 1960s, with the founding of a national network of Community Health Centers. We operate the only not-for-profit federally qualified health centers on Lower and Outer Cape Cod, where we’ve been caring for residents, visitors and workers since 1966.
As the medical home for the eight outermost towns, we’re working hard to reduce barriers to care for everyone who needs it — the overriding philosophy of community health centers. The operative word is community. We are neighbors helping neighbors.
While we mark National Health Center Week 2007, Aug. 5-11, it’s important to note a few things. A 2006 study by George Washington University School of Public Health found that “performance measure data shows the quality of care at health centers is as good as, or better than, other primary care providers.”
In 2002, the Institute of Medicine’s landmark report, “Unequal Treatment,” lauded health centers for increasing access to care and improving health outcomes for all patients, especially the most vulnerable populations. Our costs of care as a group rank among the lowest, and we reduce the need for more expensive hospital in-patient and specialty care.
The importance of maintaining and strengthening this vital safety net only increases as the network of primary care providers continues to shrink.
Community health centers also meet or exceed nationally accepted practice standards for diagnosis and treatment of chronic conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, depression, cancer and HIV, according to the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. General Accountability Office.
Each year, community health centers serve some 16 million people. Currently, 760,000 Massachusetts residents make 3 million medical visits to 52 health centers at 184 sites statewide. These are impressive numbers, but no more so than what Outer Cape Health Services achieves, pound for pound. Together, our Provincetown and Wellfleet locations handle some 36,000 patient visits annually.
People talk of the Outer Cape as isolated. There’s no question that we face geographical challenges to medical care and other services. However, at OCHS, we have managed to erase those boundaries by leveraging our affiliation with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. As a result, we have instituted specialty services (infectious diseases, pulmonology, psychiatry, podiatry), and residency and fellowship training programs.
That’s just one proud bragging point. Among other milestones in the past three years, we have:
• Implemented an administrative and financial turnaround plan, keeping viable the region’s largest private employer. Among other elements, we eliminated debt, reversed six years of operating losses to gains in less than 12 months, and grew our operating budget by 11.5 percent to $6.3 million.
• Earned accreditation from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, a nationwide standard of quality.
• Implemented planned care models in depression, diabetes and infectious diseases, which are bringing coordinated, specialized care to our patients and improving health outcomes.
• Raised more than $500,000 to fund health information technology upgrades, integrating an electronic health record and practice management system, moving to a 100 percent paperless environment on day one.
• Successfully competed for five years of Ryan White funding and other federal, state and county funding for expanded HIV/AIDS services, oral health, information technology, digital radiology, a pharmacy and other initiatives.
• Grown one of the state’s largest Pharmacy Assistance Programs, dispensing more than $500,000 in free drugs annually.
• Recruited a chief financial and operating officer; medical director; directors of human resources, program development, and performance management; along with two health center managers.
Simply put, we have a vision to be the absolute best federally qualified community health center. With your help, we will. With your help, we can continue to expand our services in response to our patients’ changing needs.
Private philanthropy is essential to realizing our mission. Patient revenues cover just 60 percent of our costs. By joining the Friends of Outer Cape Health Services, you can make a difference for the future of this special region. Please call (508) 240-0208, ext. 2209, to give or to find out more.
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Aug 9th, 2007