Budget cuts threaten clinic

Family Healthcare, based in Chillicothe, operates a number of community health locations in Athens County and the surrounding area, including Ross, Hocking, Vinton and Meigs counties. In 2010, Family Healthcare, Inc., provided medical care to 24,776 patients in this region. Chief Executive Officer Mark Bridenbaugh said Tuesday that Family Healthcare clinics had more than 95,000 patient visits. With the proposed cuts in funding, he said, cuts to services will be unavoidable.

Family Healthcare has 19 physicians on staff, seven nurse practitioners and two dentists, Bridenbaugh said. Layoffs would be a last resort, he said, but if the cuts are drastic enough they are possible.

Bridenbaugh said that the total appropriation for community health care last year was $2.9 billion, so $1.3 billion represents a substantial cut to current funding levels.

“We’ve been progressively growing for the last five years by about 3,000 patients per year,” he said. “Obviously, our ability to accept any additional new patients, as well as caring for existing patients, would be hindered.”

Family Healthcare recently applied for grant dollars to expand services, he said, but all of that is a big question mark at this point.

Family Healthcare has had a location in The Plains for several years, but recently opened a new facility in Nelsonville, he said. They applied for new-access money, but it’s highly questionable that any awards of funds will be made if the proposed funding cuts go through.

“Ultimately, health centers are kind of the right direction to go in health care,” he said. “Worst case scenario, if we have to reduce staff, make cuts and make layoffs, then all of the sudden you’ll have people without primary-care homes (clinics) and they’ll be going to emergency rooms, which is obviously the most expensive place to provide health care.”

He said this makes cutting community health funds a backward way of thinking if the goal is to save money in the end.

“Primary care in medical homes is where money should be invested in turning this health-care engine around,” he said. “You’re going to have less ER utilization and hopefully have better health outcomes as well.”

Bridenbaugh said that the talk of cuts came out of the blue considering the success of the community health center programs.

“It’s often talked about as one of the most successful federal programs that are out there,” he said. “So to see something like (the proposed cuts) was pretty alarming.”

The base federal grant for Family Healthcare is a little over $2 million out of a $10 million budget, he said. If that gets hacked by 60 percent, he said, it would ultimately lead to less access to health care in this region.

As far as what patients use Family Healthcare, Bridenbaugh said the agency services all ages from infant to geriatric care.

“We see all ages,” he said. “We’re about 40 percent Medicaid and about 20 percent uninsured, and a lot of those folks would qualify for sliding-fee scale because they fall below 200 percent of poverty guidelines. We have about 25 percent private insurance and about 15 percent Medicare.”

Meanwhile, Julie DiRossi-King, director of state government affairs for the Ohio Association of Community Health Centers, said Tuesday that cuts contained in the U.S. House Republican spending proposal would have a devastating impact on community health centers throughout the state.

She said some centers in the state would potentially have to lay off staff, ration care, limit services or maybe even close their doors altogether.

The proposed cuts, DiRossi-King said, would eliminate the capacity of community health centers to serve about 11 million customers they are serving currently.

Some Republican congressmen have said with regard to this issue that the new health-care reform bill provides funding for these centers, so these cuts won’t have as much of an impact.

DiRossi-King explained that the $1 billion in a health center trust fund from the health-care legislation is used as a tool for growth to expand into communities that aren’t currently being served. She said that if the trust fund money is used to backfill the regular funding, it halts all expansion opportunities, and still doesn’t provide funding for several new health centers that have been set up.

“We recognize the need to get our fiscal health in order,” she said. “But the question is if cutting the health-center program, which is providing significant savings to the system, improves health outcomes and quality of life and is lower in cost, is that really the right cut to make?”

The National Association of Community Health Centers estimates that the GOP budget proposal would result in 159 jobs in such health centers in Ohio, lost health care to 90,440 Ohio patients and five closed health centers in the state.