To show how our partnership is having a real effect on people’s lives — and on the available resources in the community — let’s look at one patient (we’ll call her Amy) we tracked through the system.
Amy is a middle-aged woman who has diabetes, is unemployed, and has no health insurance or personal physician.
Before establishing a medical home at Rocking Horse Center, she had nobody tracking her chronic disease. Small problems became larger problems that resulted in eight hospitalizations in one year.
She would be stabilized and provided with appropriate education, but history tended to repeat itself.
Many in her circumstances often do one of two things: Use the hospital’s emergency department as their private physician or hold off on health care because of their limited resources.
As a result of earning FQHC status in early 2009, Rocking Horse Center was able to expand services to the community.
Most importantly, adult services are now provided. In fact, in 2010 Rocking Horse Center began seeing more than 1,700 new adult patients.
That means patients like Amy can have a medical home, receiving ongoing care to keep chronic diseases in check before they become bigger problems. As a result, Amy has been hospitalized just once in the past year, a huge improvement on her previous history.
Since 2010, another goal has been to increase access to prenatal care for pregnant woman, including an alarming number of single moms. Those pregnant women can now receive prenatal care at Rocking Horse, a key factor in preventing problems at birth and beyond.
Rocking Horse Center and CMHP have collaborated to provide additional services. A diabetes educator is now on staff at the center to help patients stay on top of their diet and other important issues.
Community Mercy Med Assist is now on site at Rocking Horse Center four days a week to help patients with limited resources obtain needed medications.
CMHP has continued financial support — up to $450,000 each of the past two years — to assist Rocking Horse Center in its expansion to adult services. Support from CMHP (and predecessors) has exceeded $5 million to Rocking Horse Center since 1998.
Recently, Rocking Horse Center became a potential target for proposed cutbacks in the federal budget. We continue to monitor the debate in Congress, but are hopeful that legislators will recognize collaborative efforts such as we have in Springfield can reduce costs down the line and result in healthier communities.
Mark Wiener is president and CEO of Community Mercy Health Partners
Dana Engle is CEO of Rocking Horse Community Health Center
About the Author