Health center will have far-reaching impact

July 25, 2011

Business Examiner

Community Health Care is creating momentum on the Hilltop.

CHC is scheduled to break ground next month on a 57,000-square-foot Regional Health Center, the first major construction project on Tacoma’s Hilltop in some time.

When completed, the three-story, $23 million facility will provide a medical and dental health care home for more than 17,000 people annually as well as an in-house pharmacy. The project also will feature an urgent care clinic.

The clinic will be operated in partnership with the Franciscan Health System and will be a move toward providing  more effective and efficient patient care than hospital emergency rooms for acute but less critical conditions.

“We will start out modestly,” said David Flentge, president and CEO of Community Health Care, “but our goal is to  eventually be open 24 hours a day.”

Also in the plans is the establishment of a medical residency program to complete the training of family practice physicians. It will be continuing three-year program with six physicians in each year for a total of 18. The residency program also will be run in collaboration with St. Joseph’s, which will be the designated “teaching hospital” for the participants.

Partial funding for the expansion of such programs is being provided by the Affordable Healthcare Act of 2010.

Pierce County has a shortage of about100 primary care physicians and by 2014 it will be lacking another 40, according to the Health Department.

“If I had not had my residency in a place like Community Health Care, I would have never known about the quality of care and the opportunity for meaningful medical practice offered by Qualified Health Centers,” said Dr. Jeff Smith, medical director for Community Health Care and president of the Pierce County Medical Society.

According to residency program research, it is likely that many of the doctors who train at the Hilltop Regional Health Center will establish their practice in the Puget Sound area, thus responding to a growing need for more family care physicians.

However, the impact of the project on Pierce County and the Hilltop won’t only be felt in the health care industry.

When completed, the project will add 137 full-time equivalent positions to the local work force. It also will bring 250 patients per day to the area, thus adding more than 48,000 visitors to the Hilltop and the Martin Luther King Jr. Way corridor per year.

According to the Center for American Progress, studies show that increased funding to health centers creates additional economic benefits both within the center and beyond.

The National Association of Community Health Centers says that in 2009, health centers nationwide generated about $20 billion in economic activity for their local communities.

Further studies show that community health care centers save the U.S. health care system between $9.9 billion and $24 billion annually by eliminating unnecessary emergency room visits and other hospital-based care.

In Washington, the NACHC says community health centers will provide an economic impact of $2.5 billion and account for 20,563 jobs by 2015.