PARK DUVALLE COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER, INC.
IDS PROJECT DESCRIPTION
1. Need
a) In these times of economic crisis, the Park DuValle Community Health Center (PDCHC) is faced with growing numbers of uninsured patients due to local employment lay-offs. This has been expressed by increasing numbers of uninsured dental service seekers lining-up at the Centers? doors as much as 1 ½ hours before the Center is open, competing for emergency dental services. Many, as walk-ins are turned away without service daily. The Center at this moment (3-16-09) is the only Safety Net Dental facility that is operational in the community (Jefferson County).
b) A second immediate problem is the Center?s inability to compete for Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners (ARNP) specializing in Family Medicine. During the past two years, local chain retailers eg. Wal-Mart, Kroger, Walgreens, etc., have opened clinics in their stores offering medical services administered by ARNPs. The high salaries that these businesses pay has put us at a serious financial disadvantage in competing for needed staff. Indeed, the Center has an ARNP opening which we are unable to fill due to our inability to compete financially in recruitment. This has curtailed access to pediatric care at one of our sites.
c) Currently, the Center has a laboratory that is well equipped to do Level 2 Testing in?house. However, we are sending a significant number of specimens out to a reference laboratory due to a financial barrier to adding to our Medical Technologist (MT) staffing. These exported tests require additional turn-around time for results, and do not link to our in-house, computer-assisted linkage with providers. Adding MT staff would further reduce our need for reference laboratory support.
2. Description
a) The Center?s current number of dental operatories, available supplies and equipment and dental support staff (EDDAs) are sufficient to provide more service. By providing to missing elements - 0.6 FTE Dentist ? patients currently turned away would be able to be seen, and waiting time for appointments as well as emergency service could be significantly decreased.
b) We will augment the provider staff at our Spencer County (Taylorsville, KY) site. Adding 1.0 FTE ARNP service would restore past levels of pediatric care that we have had to do without because of financially-based recruitment difficulty.
c) Our plan is to add 0.4 FTE Medical Technologist staffing in our laboratory to take full advantage of our state-of-the-art equipment and reduce dependency on outside reference laboratory service.
Impact
IDS Funding will provide:
a) Quicker and increased access to routine and emergency dental care for uninsured, under-insured and insured patients that are currently being turned away because of limited capacity. We expect to add 3,000 encounters to 650 more patients over the two year period.
b) Access to pediatric care for patients who seek services at one of our satellite sites without success. The service of a pediatric ARNP will address this shortage. We will add 4,200 encounters to 915 patients over the two year period.
c) More in-house laboratory service of approximately 9600 tests to patients; and quicker turn-around time of tests that will alert providers to test results, thus reducing the diagnosis-treatment time cycle.