BY JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Community health centers are not just for poor people anymore.
Visiting a center in Providence to announce $2 million in federal stimulus money being distributed to the eight centers spread across Rhode Island, members of the state’s congressional delegation said the centers are becoming a mainstream health care delivery system.

In 2008, almost one-quarter of the patients seen at Rhode Island’s community health centers had private health insurance.
“If you walk into any of the community health centers today, you get to see that anybody with health insurance, whether they are wealthy or not would like to get care at a community health center because they are first rate with the best care and quality and the most modern of facilities,” Rep. Patrick Kennedy said.
“They are really acceptable to people when oftentimes I hear nightmares of people waiting hours in emergency rooms to be seen,” Kennedy added, noting that the federal legislation establishing and funding the first community health centers was sponsored by his father, Sen. Edward Kennedy, and the late Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island.
Slowly but surely, modern health care is beginning to be delivered through community health centers, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said Monday.
“Here care is coordinated, here patients get electronic health records; it is quite a good model for the improvement we need in the health care system. It’s not just that they are here to serve people whose economic situations are (dire). They are actually showing a model of how America’s most well off could be better served in a more integrated and electronically supported and quality oriented health care system.”
“This effort makes a great deal of sense,” said Sen. Jack Reed, “we are building on success. Health care centers provide care to about 100,000 Rhode Islanders, they provide it efficiently, effectively and compassionately. And we are trying to expand their efforts, particularly at a time when people are losing their private insurance, this is a place of comfort and very good care.”
Reed said the program “matches the dollars with the great passion, the great professionalism and the great skill of the doctors and nurses, the health care professionals and the administrators who run these health centers.”
Rep. James Langevin told the group of health center workers and administrators that Rhode Island’s congressional delegation “stands united in the fight to establish universal health care” for all Americans.
Blackstone Valley Community Health Care will get $225,000 of the stimulus money to extend evening hours and remain open on Saturdays and Sundays, according to Raymond Lavoie, the executive director.
Another $500,000 Lavoie said, is for infrastructure and Blackstone Valley will be using that for health information technology. “Blackstone Valley has the most sophisticated electronic medical records and electronic dental records in the country, not just the state. We are making an awful lot of progress improving the quality of the care.” So the agency is going to spend more of the money in the area of information technology than bricks and mortar infrastructure, he said.
Thundermist Health Center, on the other hand, will use $1.1 million it is getting for capital needs into a new 12,000 square foot facility in West Warwick, to replace the current 3,600 square foot center that is there now, according to CEO Maria Montanaro.
Montanaro said an additional $353,000 in stimulus funds will go to hire medical practitioners at all three of our sites, as well as additional social service workers so we could provide more eligibility screening services. So we’re providing more medical services, more behavioral health services and screening services. We’ve projected we will see several thousand new patients with that funding, remembering that it goes over two years.
Jane Hayward, CEO of the RI Health Center Association, said the centers “are a critical element in the state’s health care landscape. They provide comprehensive, high quality primary and preventive care to some of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable populations.
Hayward pointed out that there are no municipal or county health departments in the state. “In Rhode Island, the RI Community Health Centers are the primary care infrastructure for the state.”