Hub & Spoke

La Clínica de La Raza Celebrates an Expansion of Quality Health Services With New State-of-the-Art Facility in the Monument Corridor

Our country recently celebrated the second anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, fondly referred to as Obamacare, which expands healthcare access for millions of individuals throughout the nation. There are plenty of positive changes in store for Californians due to the historic passing of this law. Among them are expansion opportunities for Community Health Centers, which provide quality primary health care services for all patients who are in need of care. A shining star in quality healthcare delivery is La Clínica de La Raza (La Clínica), which was founded in 1971 in response to the lack of health care services for residents of East Oakland.

La Clínica presently operates 29 medical, dental, and school-based clinic sites throughout Contra Costa, Solano, and Alameda counties. In 2011 La Clínica served 74,302 patients resulting in 361,261 medical, dental, podiatry, mental health, and health education visits.

As La Clínica continues to expand to meet the needs of a growing patient population, they maintain their vision to be a premier community health center, rooted in the concepts of wellness, prevention and patient-centered care.

La Clínica’s most recent expansion achievement is the opening of a new health center on 2000 Sierra Road, Concord, CA, which began serving patients in the beginning of March. They renovated and expanded a building purchased in 2009 in the Monument Corridor Community to create a 16,958 sq. ft., two-story, modern, state-of-the-art, health care facility.

All are welcome to join in a celebratory Open House for La Clínica’s new site on April 12, 2012 from 5:30-7:30. Location is 2000 Sierra Road, Concord, CA 94518.

Impact of expansion:

• Medical exam rooms increased from 6 to 12 with 2 new procedure rooms
• Dental operatories doubled from 6 to 12
• Expanded site from 5,000 to 16,958 sq. ft.
• Capacity expected to expand the number of patients served annually from 5,000 to close to 14,800 patients
• Ability to provide a “medical and dental home” for more Contra Costa residents (one-stop with comprehensive services under one roof)

Services Provided:

• Integrated Behavioral Health Services
• Case Management
• Chronic Disease Management
• Dental Care
• Family Medicine
• HIV Testing
• Health Education
• Immunizations
• Pediatrics
• Women's Health
• Community Programs
• Senior Services
• Optometry Services

The America We Want

Here's a riddle: What steadily shrinks for the first 39 years of its life and grows blazingly fast for the next 30?

(Sorry, gents - the answer's unfortunately not, as a general rule, "my hairline.")

Give up? 

It's the income gap in America - the difference in the percentage of the nation's wealth held by the richest 1% of the population and that held by everyone else.  Without getting into too many details, the more-than-somewhat-alarming fact of life in the USA these days is that if you're at the very top, you're sitting prettier than ever, and if you're not up there, things are looking grimmer.  

PBS had a great segment on this yesterday, which got us thinking.  

It got us thinking about what kind of America we Americans are making with the public policies we're enacting into law.  

Because regardless of what's to blame for the widening gyre that's blasting through the middle class, it seems that at least part of the answer to social inequality has to be wise federal legislation designed to bring us all together on common ground.

Case in point: Federal Healthcare Reform. Which, incidentally, just passed its anniversary. 

Congressman George Miller was in Concord this week to celebrate what the law's already provided to the sick and otherwise hard-to-insure.  He introduced Dr. Walker of CCHS (to whom he referred as his mentor on health policy) and a panel of regular people - from all walks of life - who're now able to access medical care that just months ago would have been totally out of reach.  

And then Mr. Miller said something so spot-on we wrote it down verbatim:

“On the horizon, there’s an insane idea that they can repeal this and replace it with a voucher. A voucher is the most expensive way to do healthcare… I don’t think that’s America. I don’t think it’s our future… As people find out more and more about this plan, I hope they will understand this is a generally great American idea.”

Right and right. Half of Congress is up in arms about how un-American it is to spend tax dollars on greater healthcare access for everyone. But America is what we make it through conscious policy choices. And the America that we here at the Consortium want to see isn't one where 1% of Americans have dream lives and the other 99% just scrapes by. 

One hundred percent of us deserve some basic things equally. Including health care.

In a society wedged further and further apart, Healthcare Reform honors the American ideal that we all have the right to a fair start.  

So, Mr. Miller, count community clinics in for the fight to keep Reform on the books. And thank you, as always, for your leadership!

Saving Medi-Cal will take more than optimism

Have you ever fallen a bit into the red ink with your personal finances? Sure, who hasn't.  Have you then, as a sort of family recovery plan, written a budget that puts you back in the black, but does so based in large part on the expectation that your boss will agree to raise your salary by $12 billion?  

If you answered yes to these questions, you may qualify for a job at the California Department of Finance, or perhaps in the governor's office itself, where the zeitgeist is a certain rose-tinted optimism about the generosity of the California public.  

Specifically, an optimism that in a June special election California voters will agree to extend about $12 billion in what were originally meant to be temporary tax increases.  Absent these tax extensions, the service cuts that Sacramento will have to make in order to balance the state budget will make drastically severe a quaint understatement.  

(As the comic to the right says, if you think the $1.7 billion in Medi-Cal cuts that Gov. Brown proposed in January are bad, consider what they'll be if he's got to find a dozen or so billion more dollars to squeeze out of state programs.)  

Actually, given that taxes do need to be raised somehow, the plan to bring tax extensions to the voters is a politically savvy one, given that it's harder for opponents in the Legislature to block something that's going to The People for approval.  Also, if a recent PPIC poll is any indication, it has at least a chance of succeeding.

To our mind, however, the PPIC poll demonstrates the possibility, but not the probability, of success.  If we - you, us, and all of the People Who Care about Our Community - want to save Medi-Cal and health centers from the chopping block, we've got to get out and vote in June.  

To that end, we at the Consortium are launching a major voter registration push, starting now.  More detail will follow - suffice to say that this will be our top advocacy priority in Spring 2011.  (BTW - if you're reading this and aren't registered - or have moved recently and need to re-register - follow this link to get the quick-and-easy process started.)  

But! We can't do it alone, and so we're writing to say: Join us! If you're an individual who can help out on the campaign to sign up voters, drop us a line and we'll put you to work! If you're an organization that's also doing voter reg. work this spring, let's figure out how we can work together to canvass the whole region.  

Future registered voters of Contra Costa and Solano Counties, we're coming for you! 

Olé! (Tanir's New Gig)

Exciting and sad news this week, dear readers: Tanir Ami, ED of the Clinic Consortium and quite possibly the best boss ever in the history of the world, has been named the new CEO of Clinic Ole in Napa.  

Which is extremely exciting because What a Great Gig, right?!?  

But which is a bittersweet pill for us to swallow here at the Consortium as Tanir has been, as we mentioned, and will continue to mention ad infinitum, the best boss since the invention of bosses. 

Clinic Ole is Napa’s only community clinic, and sees over 18,000 patients a year.  It’s a vital part of the healthcare delivery system in that region.  Soon, it’ll have an all-new location at the Napa County Health and Human Services campus on Old Sonoma Road.  Vital, thriving, and growing – that sounds like the kind of place for Tanir, for sure. 

So while December 31, Tanir’s departure date, looms on the horizon like a giant black cloud of tears and sadness, we’re also, when we step back and think about all the great work that she will do for the good folks of Napa, stoked for Tanir and stoked on her next professional adventure.  

But that’s many weeks away, so let’s not get too weepy just yet.  The Consortium continues its operations apace, working with our partners throughout Contra Costa and Solano counties to integrate and strengthen the healthcare system for those in most need of high-quality, low-cost services.  

That’s the mission that Tanir has put front and center at the Consortium and that remains our guiding light moving forward.  Tanir’s lasting legacy will be a Consortium strong and sophisticated enough to continue this mission without her.  

But did we mention how much she'll be missed?

Meet Jackie Jones

This week we have the distinct pleasure of introducing you, the community at large, to the new (well, two months new) site manager for La Clinica North Vallejo, Jackie Jones.

Jackie took a break from her breakneck-paced schedule to answer such burning questions of ours as, “what is your professional background,” and “what is your favorite type of food?”  We found her dedicated, delightful, and generally awesome. 

And so, without further ado, we give you Ms. Jackie Jones, Site Manager Extraordinaire, in several bullet points:

• Previous gig:  Site manager at Petaluma Health Center (an FQHC) for 6 years.  This involved 1.5 hrs of commuting from Richmond each day; cutting that down to less than 30 mins per day is, not surprisingly, one of the many reasons Jackie is glad to be at La Clinica.

• A wealth of knowledge: Jackie’s eager to put into play in North Vallejo the best practices she learned the hard way in Petaluma – she comes with a deep well of knowledge and experience in maintaining excellent clinic operations.  She’s also field-tested in the dicey game of electronic health records, having quarterbacked Petaluma’s successful shift from paper-cuts to megabytes.  Reflecting on her process of learning-by-doing in her previous gig, she quips, “I’m glad to know what I’m doing this time around.” 

• Vision for North Vallejo: “FQHCs are sites that can and want to grow - to do the things that will bring continuity of care and quality care to the patient.  I’m looking forward to bringing my experience to the table.  I’ve got a great group here, and I’ll be engaging them in everything I’m doing.” 

• Ideal vacation: Anywhere without a ringing phone.  Cruise ships work well for that sort of thing.

• Favorite food: Mexican.

• Favorite recent movie: Taken (“It had me on the edge of my seat the whole time!”)

Delightful!  From all of us here at the Consortium: Welcome to Solano, Jackie! 

Tools for Change

We here at the Consortium believe strongly in the power of a single committed individual to make a difference.  

We also believe strongly in the power of an overwhelmingly massive, well-organized, fired-up network of committed individuals to make a difference. 

As our readers know, it’s our goal to pair the deep field of community advocates in our two counties with ever-more sophisticated tools for advocacy.  That means ways of networking, sharing information, organizing, turning out crowds, and deftly using traditional and new media outlets to broadcast key messages. 

And so, dear readers, we are happy to announce our new Take Action web-based advocacy tool – really a suite of online tools that allow you to - 

• Sign up for action alerts to keep up with which issues are popping
• Quickly find out who are your elected officials and link to their bios, contact info, and committee seats (so you know the issues over which they have the most influence)
• Instantly pull up a list of CA newspapers and automatically send them a letter to the editor of your own creation
• Register to vote
• Track current elections, including instantly calling up a list of who’s running for what federal/state office in your part of the state

We hope you check it out and sign up to join our ever-expanding network of good folks standing up for what’s right in our community. 

New Consortium Website

This Just In!

In a week otherwise sorely lacking in the "extremely pressing issues that demand blog comment" department, we decided to create our own breaking news story by publishing a new and improved (and way cooler looking) website for the Consortium.  

Many of you may be asking yourselves, 1) "The Consortium has a website?" and 2) "Aren't I currently on the Consortium's website?"  

The answers to those questions are 1) Yes, and 2) No.  

To be sure, the Consortium publishes this blog, but we also have a website dedicated to the Consortium itself - complete with staff bios, descriptions of our past and current projects, information about our member clinics, and a new web-based tool that allows advocates to automatically send our government representatives messages about issues affecting healthcare for low-income communities.  (This last feature is our favorite.)

In a whirling dervish of circular website navigation, we also provide a link on that site back to…this one.

So if you've got 37 seconds, follow this link to our new site and, if you're so moved, drop us an email or post a comment and let us know what you think!

What's in a brand name?

As many of our readers will already know, today is the day that Planned Parenthood Golden Gate officially loses its affiliation with Planned Parenthood's national body, meaning that all the clinics in San Francisco, Sonoma, Marin, Alameda and San Mateo that have Planned Parenthood signs on their doors have to take those signs down and call themselves something else. They'll still operate, but not under the tried and true brand-name that we all know and love. As newspaper and radio reports have detailed, de-affiliation from Planned Parenthood is a very rare and dramatic thing. A sort of "nuclear option" for troubled clinics. For us here at the Consortium, the imbroglio brings up some important issues, not least because one of our members is Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo, and we've received our fair share of calls asking how PPGG's saga has and will affect PPSD. Here are some of our thoughts on the matter: First, Planned Parenthood Golden Gate is not Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo. This may seem pretty self-evident, but we think it bears repeating because as perceived by the general public, Planned Parenthood is Planned Parenthood, period. The fact is, however, that Planned Parenthood affiliates operate as independent, self-contained nonprofit corporations. They share neither finances nor governance. The only things they share, actually, are their name and of course standards and protocols set out by the national office. The point here is that what happens to the (former) Planned Parenthood in Alameda or San Francisco does not directly affect Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo in Contra Costa or Solano. That said, it's clear that there are huge indirect effects. The foremost being that PPSD will likely be moving in to fill the new void in at least some of the counties. This is an important point - that even in this time of Medi-Cal payment delays and chronic under-funding of women's health programs, Planned Parenthood in Contra Costa/Solano is thriving. All this raises the issue of branding, and specifically brand loyalty among clients and patients. When the PPGG clinics make their name change, their patients will face a choice: to stay with a newly-named organization or to seek care elsewhere. When PPSD clinics open up in the same counties, that choice will be even more stark - stay with what was Planned Parenthood, or go to what is now Planned Parenthood. How much does that brand name matter? In our opinion, it matters quite a bit - it's the proverbial good housekeeping seal of approval, the thing that tells prospective clients that care provided here is high-quality and reliable. But client-provider relationships matter a ton, too. So it will be interesting to see the movement of patients in the wake of today's disaffiliation. Finally, just a note on the importance of nonprofit governance by boards of directors. There are many, many criteria that board members typically need to meet. Membership in the organization; fundraising prowess; political astuteness. But as the PPGG situation demonstrates, perhaps the most important is the ability to provide sound fiscal oversight. Nonprofits are, after all, corporations handing real money in often very real amounts. The need for hard-headed number-crunchers on nonprofit boards is no less than the need for them on the board of Starbucks or Apple Computer. In this, the revocation of PPGG's affiliation, grounded in financial troubles, serves as a strong warning for nonprofits everywhere.

Operation Access' Success & Growth Speak to Huge Demand

Here's one of the countless reasons it really stinks to be poor and in need of healthcare services: medical schools today graduate massively disproportionate numbers of specialists (so disproportionate that only 30% of docs do primary care), but if you're uninsured and low-income, finding a specialist who will see you is a virtual 'Where's Waldo' hunt.  

Mainstream news reports bemoan the glut of specialists and what it means for the cost of healthcare in the US, but if you're poor and uninsured these news stories are a sort of bizarre slap in the face.  There is no glut of specialists in low-income communities; just the opposite.

Three cheers, then, for Operation Access - the program that in Contra Costa County and throughout the Bay Area connects the uninsured and indigent to outpatient surgical and specialty services provided pro bono by volunteer doctors, nurses, and hospital systems.

In 2009 alone, OA estimates that these volunteer medical professionals donated $1.8 million in charity care, representing a lifeline for community clinic patients and others who wouldn't otherwise have a place to turn for orthopedic care, hernia surgery, and other outpatient specialty surgeries.

On the 17th of this month, OA held its first GI diagnostic event - providing much-needed non-routine colonoscopies to 4 community clinic patients.  For our part, the Clinic Consortium, under a Specialty Care Access grant from Kaiser, last year surveyed clinics throughout the county and found hurdles to diagnostic GI services a major problem for our patients.  These are services that community clinics don't provide in-house, but that patients have tremendous difficulty finding on referral.  This spring, we spent days behind the scenes coordinating the community clinic and OA systems in preparation for the GI event. By all accounts it was a rousing success, and hopefully the first of many!  

Certainly there's no shortage of demand by low-income uninsured patients for specialty services.  OA's pool of volunteers has shot up 317% since early 2009, but it's still nearly at capacity, bursting at the seams as community clinics and others refer patients in need.  

The work goes on.  In the mean time, if you see one of those news stories pondering the overabundance of specialists, consider taking a moment to drop a letter to the editor.  Tell 'em what's really going on in our communities, and pass on OA's phone number.  

Celebration!

As this article by Lisa Vorderbrueggen in the Times rightly reports, while some Democrat members of Congress spent their spring breaks back in conservative districts bracing for tea party assault, our region's representatives came back to the warm embrace of a fired-up, grateful public.

At least that was the vibe at last night's town hall/reception for Congressmen George Miller and John Garamendi in Martinez.  It was triumphal, and happy.  There was levity.  Miller and Garamendi donned doctor's coats and stethoscopes (presented by Jane Garcia of La Clinica and Cheryl Johnson of Brookside clinic) and hammed it up for the crowd.  It felt like election night when your candidate wins.  It was genuine political fun.  

Community clinics owe a big thanks to both Miller and Garamendi - not to mention Pelosi and Obama - for their work and votes on healthcare reform.  We're set to double the number of patients we see (nationwide) over the next 5 years.  We're set to hire more primary care docs who are benefiting from loan forgiveness programs that incentivise community work.  We're set to build new sites and expand our current ones.  

Who says Congress never gets anything done?