|
July 15, 2009
 It is with great pride I announce Northeast Community Clinics has been assigned “330” status by the Federal Government’s Human Resources & Services Administration (HRSA). This designation gives our organization greater opportunity for growth and service throughout the Los Angeles region, especially in the Wilmington-San Pedro area.
With the 330 designation, NECC will provide an additional 40 new jobs and plans to serve approximately 4,500 patients in the next two years.
Headquartered in Alhambra, NECC has 11 clinics in the Los Angeles communities of Highland Park, Hawthorne, Bell, Wilmington, Watts and downtown and South Los Angeles. Founded in 1971 as one of the original free clinics, NECC saw 33,858 patients during 117,217 visits last year.
Health centers, primary care and prevention are at the heart of President Obama’s plan for an affordable, accessible, health care system.
Like NECC, these health centers will expand access to care by helping people in need -- many with no health insurance -- obtain access to comprehensive primary and preventive health care services. And that helps relieve the burden on emergency rooms across the country that have become primary care clinics for too many that lack coverage, often at taxpayer expense.
The mission of Northeast Community Clinics is to provide comprehensive, quality health care in a linguistically competent and culturally sensitive manner to patients, regardless of their ability to pay, in the indigent communities of Los Angeles.
-Christopher Lau, MD
NECC Executive Director/CEO
A generous grant from L.A. Care Health Plan, a community-accountable health plan serving more than 800,000 Los Angeles County residents through free or low-cost health insurance programs, will enable four Northeast Community Clinics to extend their hours of operation including Saturdays.
The four are: California Family Care, now open at 7:30 a.m. Monday through Saturdays; NECC, now opening at 7:30 a.m. and closing at 8 p.m. on Mondays with Tuesday through Saturday hours from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Women’s Health Center, now open Saturdays; and Women’s Wellness center, opening at 7:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday.
“LA Care has enhanced our patient services,” says Angie Armada Dela Cruz, LVN, Quality Assurance Director, “since added hours and Saturdays give our patients so much more flexibility in scheduling appointments. We are very grateful.”
Called the Extended Hours Project, the grant was approved by Dr. Elaine Batchlor, L.A. Care Chief Medical Officer.
The four health insurance programs L.A. Care administers are: Fe Center, Mission Statement Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, L.A. Care’s Healthy Kids and L.A. Care’s Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plan.
The Ahmanson Foundation has granted Northeast Community Clinics $50,000 for purchase of i2i Tracks, a new software system that will revolutionize the way community clinics like NECC tracks patients, especially those with chronic diseases, and report data to government and social service agencies and health collaboratives.
Tracking patients is one of the biggest challenges now facing Northeast Community Clinics, due in large part to the influx of so many new patients due to recent closures of community clinics that could not stay afloat during recent state budget stalemates and, of course, Martin Luther King Hospital.
“We believe i2i Tracks, a leading chronic disease and preventative health management system (CDMS), will help us do just that,” says Dr. Christopher Lau, executive director/CEO. “Our focus initially will be tracking diabetic and asthma patients.
“By supplementing our current Patient Management systems with i2i, we can vastly improve our capabilities to provide complete health care services to our patient population,” says Dr. Lau. “The addition of a system that automates tracking of patient health status, ongoing health problems and associated treatment can provide enormous benefits, both to Northeast and to our patients.”
The implementation of a visit/appointment tracking system with alerts, reminders, follow-up notifications and recalls relating to ongoing treatment can assure patients get all the care and treatment they should, thus improving their overall health and reducing the cost and health impacts of ongoing treatment (or the lack thereof).
i2i will include several new, electronic data interfaces among that system and NECC’s PECS system. These interfaces would automatically pass the needed data to the health management system for tracking and reporting purposes.
This would reap several important benefits, including increased efficiency and significant improvements in our patient data integrity and quality, according to Dr. Lau. The interfaces would also avoid the issues of entering patient data into multiple systems, since the required patient data would be automatically passed from system to system as needed. This would eliminate discrepancies in patient data and provide improvements in patient safety.
Having data ready for analysis and comparison to local and statewide community entities will allow providers to make quick and prudent policy changes in patient management, which ultimately insures the highest quality of patient care and disease management.
Incorporated in 1952 as a private foundation with initial funding from financier Howard F. Ahmanson and his wife, Dorothy Grannis Ahmanson, The Ahmanson Foundation has more than $1 billion in assets and is based in Beverly Hills, CA.
 Amazingly, some children just seem to know what they want to be when they grow up. Donna Fritz was one.
She wanted to be a midwife.
“From the time I was eight or nine, I knew I wanted to help women through labor and delivery,” she remembers. “It was a calling.”
Claiming to have always “cared immensely” for pregnant women, Donna figures she has delivered about 3,200 babies throughout Southern California in her more than 22 years of midwifery. She says she remembers every one. In fact, she is still in contact with many of those first mothers and their daughters who are now pregnant.
Her first delivery was when she, herself, was pregnant with her first child (she now has three daughters, ages 22, 20 and 14). “I was calm throughout the delivery, but afterwards by knees started shaking. I experienced real terror when I thought of all the things that could have gone wrong,” says Donna. “Still, delivery is almost a spiritual experience that uplifted me and made me realize I was doing just what I had always wanted.”
Teen moms are Donna’s favorite patients. “They are so open, so fresh. Too often they are looked down upon with condescension and rushed through exams by other medical providers,” admits Donna. “I like to take my time, to build a connection with each girl.”
NECC’s clinics and staff allow her to do just that. “Every girl is treated with dignity and respect by the clinic staff and me,” she reports. “I devote real time with each girl. Often I schedule an extra visit for one who seems unsure or nervous.”
Because she is not rushed from patient to patient, Donna tries to educate young girls as much as possible to prepare them for labor. “Many of these young teens have had no education about reproduction, let alone pregnancy. By providing education, information and emotional support during their pregnancy, I build a critical connection so that when it’s time to work together in delivery, there is mutual trust and respect.”
So is the life of a midwife always predictable? “The phone rings all hours of the day and night,” she laughs. “I have spent more birthdays with others than I have my own daughters.”
|
