How has the recession affected your practice and they way you do business?
We’re a community health center, so we were already seeing medically underserved patients. What the recession has done is increased the flow of patients who can’t afford regular care. Our model of healthcare is specifically set up for those types of patients – Medicare, Medicaid and uninsured and underinsured.
What financial action did you take?
We looked at our expenses, and where we could cut or postpone expenses, we did. We have always operated on the lean side, so there wasn't a lot of trimming to do.
What kinds of difficulties do you expect to face in 2010?
Actually, we’re growing. We’re gaining more and more patients all the time who are looking for more affordable healthcare, including those patients who are responsible for more out of pocket expenses.
We plan on acquiring a new site in our service area, which will allow for the expansion of services we offer. The site is in Niles, Mich. and will offer primary care, dental and behavioral services to patients. In total, the clinic serves nearly 51,000 visits a year, and the new site will more than double what we do now.
In regard to financial incentives for electronic health record use, do you have meaningful use requirements on your radar?
We don’t presently use an electronic health record. We will be implementing an EHR in late 2010 or in 2011, and will meet the time frame of 90 continuous days of meaningful use to qualify for the ARRA dollars starting in 2011. At this time we are implementing a clinical registry program, which will allow us to more easily extrapolate certain data for federal reporting requirements. We annually report demographic and clinical data to the Bureau of Primary Health Care on the Uniform Data System (UDS) report. Currently, demographic data can be extrapolated from our practice management system; however, clinical data is gathered by chart review. With the clinical registry program we will be able to pull clinical data (such as blood pressure or lab values) on our entire patient population.