By the numbers
$650,000: Grant Rocking Horse Community Health Center received to expand services into Madison County
11,000: Number of patients at Clark County locations last year.
48,000: Number of visits performed at Rocking Horse in Clark County last year.
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The Rocking Horse Community Health Center received a $650,000 grant Wednesday to open a primary health-care facility in Madison County as part of a national effort to reach underserved areas.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced $101 million in Affordable Care Act funding for 164 new health center sites. Ohio received about $7.2 million and Rocking Horse was the only recipient from Southwest Ohio.
The Springfield-based federally qualified health center, 651 S. Limestone St., applied for the grant last October with a goal of providing 5,600 office visits during its first year of operation in Madison County. The new facility will be located at the Madison County Health Partners Free Clinic on the campus of the Madison Health hospital in London.
“This is a huge win for the people of Madison County,” Rocking Horse Chief Executive Officer Chris Cook said.
The new facility will create 14 jobs over the next two years, Cook said. The location will serve as a primary care facility the first year, and will begin providing behavioral health services in its second year.
About 30 percent of the Madison County population is uninsured, designating it as medically underserved, Cook said. Last October, Rocking Horse began treating insured patients about four hours per week as part of a partnership with the Free Clinic.
The Free Clinic is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization in its 10th year designed to provide healthcare to only to uninsured residents, Executive Director Melissa Canney said.
Before the Affordable Care Act and the expansion of Medicaid, the free clinic saw 400 patients totaling about 1,000 visits per year. However, after the health-care overhaul, those uninsured office visits dropped and many of its longtime patients weren’t able to see their doctors because they now had insurance, she said.
“Imagine going to your doctor for nine, 10 years, being comfortable, being satisfied with the services and then being told you can no longer come here because you have insurance,” Canney said. “For a lot of people, that was very scary and very upsetting.”
With the merger with Rocking Horse, the patients can see their doctors uninterrupted, Canney said. They’ll also be able to continue providing services to the uninsured.
Some of the details still have to be ironed out, Canney said, but services will be expanded. For many years the free clinic relied on physician volunteers, she said.
“It’s such a huge accomplishment and achievement for our community,” Canney said. “We’re happy to be able to have this partnership.”
The Springfield center has worked with the free clinic for about three years to expand care, Rocking Horse Board of Directors’ President Rob Baker said.
“We looked at it as an opportunity to serve those folks,” Baker said. “And we wanted to make sure we could do it in a way that wasn’t going to be detrimental to the Rocking Horse mission, but would add to it.”
The grant will fund the new facility and won’t affect care in Clark County, Baker said.
“We’ll be able to hire the few additional providers to serve the folks in Madison County,” Baker said.
Rocking Horse currently has 115 employees at its three locations in Clark County, including offices at Keifer Academy and Mulberry Terrace apartment complex. The organization has more than 11,000 patients and performed more than 48,000 visits last year. In 2013, the organization completed an $8 million expansion at its facility near downtown Springfield.
The Ohio Association of Community Health Centers is concerned Champaign County may need more healthcare providers, Baker said. A few Champaign County residents currently attend the Rocking Horse, he said, but there is no official site there.
“If anything, there may be an opportunity there, but it’s way off in the future I would say,” Baker said.
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