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Health Care: Family HealthCare Network: Health Clinics Help Poor and Uninsured

Posted on: Sunday, 9 April 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Tracy Correa, The Fresno Bee, Calif.

Apr. 9--Other Stories

* Hall of Fame: Jack Stone, founder of Stone Land Co. * Professional Services: Diane Anderson, Agricultural & Priority Pollutants Laboratory Inc. * Charitable/Nonprofit: Peter Carey, Self-Help Enterprises * Real Estate/Construction: Dirk Poeschel, Dirk Poeschell Land Development Services * Small Business: Nelson's ACE Hardward * Manufacturing: ADCO Manufacturing * Agriculture: Kevin and Diane Herman, The Specialty Crop Co. * Retail/Wholesale: The Charles McMurray Company * Finance/Banking/Insurance: County Bank

Family HealthCare Network opened its first clinic in a two-room house on Date Avenue in Porterville in 1976. When it outgrew the space, the clinic relocated to a one-time market and gas station that was renovated to house six exam rooms and offices for support staff.

"It literally was the Highway 190 market and gas station," recalls Harry Foster, president and CEO of Family HealthCare Network.

It has come a long way since then.

Today, the nonprofit organization operates 10 rural health clinics and had about 335,000 patient visits last year. It has 635 employees and an annual budget of $45 million.

The clinics, like most federally qualified health centers, treat patients who have little or no access to health-care services. About 18% of its funding comes from grants or contracts with the state or federal government; the rest comes from patients and other third-party payers.

In addition to qualifying for grants, the federal designation also allows the rural clinics to obtain a higher rate of reimbursement from government-sponsored programs for the poor, elderly and disabled covered by Medi-Cal and Medicare -- sometimes twice the amount provided to urban-based providers.

The clinics are located in the communities of Springville, Porterville, Visalia (two offices), Ivanhoe, Woodlake, Three Rivers, Cutler-Orosi, Goshen and Hanford.

About half the clinics' patients are farmworkers, many of them poor. But staffers also treat patients covered by insurance as well as working people just getting by and without insurance. For the latter, the clinics offer a sliding scale payment based on a patient's income.

Patients have access to a wide array of services, from family practice to dental care. But services have also expanded to include behavioral health, as well as complementary and alternative medicine, such as Ayurveda (ah-yur-VAY-dah). Ayurveda has been practiced in India for 5,000 years and includes diet and herbal remedies and emphasizes the use of body, mind and spirit in disease prevention and treatment.

Foster says the innovative programs complement the traditional health-care services that remain the core of Family HealthCare Network and show how patients are driving changes in health care.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Fresno Bee, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Fresno Bee

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