Duffy Center Celebrates 20 Years of Providing Health Care

Courtesy of Duffy Health Center: Alicia Gapstur, MAT RN,
Kathleen Bresette, Beard Member
Christina Wiseman, Marketing Communications and Development Specialist

SOUTH YARMOUTH – Duffy Health Center celebrated its 20^th anniversary Monday night during it public meeting in South Yarmouth.

The organization, which started in a broom closet in the former NOAH Homeless Shelter, is dedicated to providing medical and mental health care and addiction treatment for the area’s homeless.

Heidi Nelson, the CEO of Duffy, said the center has grown by 25 percent over the last decade and now serves more than 3,400 patients per year.

“Where we see ourselves going over the next three years in our strategic plan is maybe not necessarily growing in size or numbers of people that we are serving but really looking at the depth and the breadth of the service that we are providing to the people we already take care of,” Nelson said.

Nelson said a major challenge moving into the future will be to grow services while reducing costs at the same time.

“Our payers, primarily government payers, are looking for us to demonstrate value. They want us to provide outcomes and have healthier patients at a lower cost,” she said. “So value is the name of the game and we are really doing a lot of retooling to make sure we meet those expectations.”

One of the organization’s major highlights over the last two decades was introducing medically assisted treatment for opioid addition on Cape Cod.

“We were the first community health center on Cape Cod to provide MAT in a significant way and we actually were the lead in a consortium of community health centers to spread that model across all of the health centers across the Cape,” Nelson said.

Duffy now has almost 400 patients in its addiction treatment program.

Nelson said the organization’s case management programs have also distinguished it from health care centers in the region.

“We train our staff in evidence-based practices to use the most up to date and the most effective techniques with our patients,” she said.

“We really believe what distinguishes our staff is their professionalization and the fact that we hire for people who have the right compassion and the right smarts, but also people who are willing to learn and grow and know how to do things in the most professional way.”

During the public meeting the organization also presented its President’s Award to the Duffy Family and Caring Partner Award to St. Joseph’s House, formally the NOAH homeless shelter.