CCB MEDIA PHOTO
Barnstable County Commissioner Sheila Lyons, State Senator Dan Wolf and State Representative Brian Mannal listen as Duffy Health Center CEO Heidi Nelson speaks during the Community Health Centers Legislative Breakfast Wednesday at Harbor Community Health Center in Hyannis.
HYANNIS – Improving clinical outcomes and reducing health care costs were the major topics of discussion Wednesday during the Community Health Centers legislative breakfast.
Cape Cod community health center leaders were joined by a handful of elected officials at the Harbor Community Health Center on Attucks Lane in Hyannis to provide updates on their services and what they are looking to accomplish moving forward.
“What we try to do is once or twice a year is to get [the legislators] attention and remind them what the community health centers of Cape Cod are all about, and how many people we serve and what services we have,” said Harbor Health Services, Inc. President and CEO Daniel Driscoll. “What a community health center tries to do is treat whatever the prevalent concerns are of the community at large, not just the people in the waiting room.”
Some of the legislators who were on hand were State Senator Dan Wolf, state representatives Brian Mannal and Sarah Peake, along with representatives from State Senator Vinny deMacedo’s office and Representative William Keating’s office.
The county and towns were also represented with Bourne Selectman Michael Blanton, Barnstable Town Council member Phil Wallace, Barnstable County Commissioners Sheila Lyons and Mary Pat Flynn and Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates Linda Zuern.
Over the last 10 years, the healthcare system has changed federally and in the state with everyone having access to health insurance. Duffy Health Center CEO Heidi Nelson said the focus has now shifted to access to health centers.
“Now what we are being asked to do is reduce costs and improve quality,” she said. “That may sound easy to some people but it’s really quite a challenge for us to figure out what are the systems and kind of staff that we need to have in place.”
Nelson said the focus has to be on what the most productive activities are that improve overall health instead of the number of patient visits each day.
“It’s a very different way of thinking about how we provide services and the challenge is whether or not the payment system will change to reward us for taking better care of our patients,” Nelson said.
Reimbursement from MassHealth for services was also discussed with a focus on behavioral health.
“Behavioral health reimbursement is terrible,” Nelson said. “And I go around telling everyone who will listen that we get paid for a psychiatrist, who is a doctor, 40 percent of what we get paid when a medical doctor does a visit.”
“And behavioral health integration into primary care, which is what is being pushed by everyone, isn’t reimbursed at all,” said Sally Deane, CEO of Outer Cape Health Services.
Community health centers are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Geiger Gibson Community Health Center in Dorchester, which was the first community health center in the country.
“The primary message [for legislators] is thank you for your support over the last 50 years and certainly more recently as we have had some funding challenges,” said Karen Gardner, CEO of Community Health Center of Cape Cod. “Going forward, it’s not the time to give up. We’ve solved so many of the issues we have been working toward and now it’s time to keep that pressure on.”
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