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Message from the Executive Director |
Message from the Chair The theme of our 2003 report “Access to Care”
reflects a core value central to CCI. Our mission is to provide
high quality care to populations who encounter barriers to care
and to promote the need for improved access with a special focus
on the uninsured and Medicaid populations. The word “access”
is defined as “freedom or ability to obtain or make use of.”
For the most part, people with employer-sponsored insurance have
the ability to obtain medical care whenever they need it, including
preventative measures like well-checkups and physical exams. Insured
people have the freedom to choose a provider based on quality, convenience,
cultural background, and other things important to them. They make
use of the wonderful hospitals, specialists, and modern treatments
that our community boasts. The uninsured and Medicaid populations
have little or no choice in where or from whom they receive care.
Nonprofit agencies like Community Clinic exist
to provide care to people who otherwise would not have it. We are
one of the largest providers of primary health care and related
services for the Medicaid, under- and uninsured populations in Montgomery
County. In addition to primary care, CCI administers the State of
Maryland Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition education
and food supplement Program in Montgomery County and for one zip
code area in Prince George’s County. All told, more than 23,000
children and adults rely on CCI for medical and/or nutrition care.
We constantly strive to make our services linguistically appropriate
and culturally sensitive. To paraphrase a message from the Bureau
of Primary Health Care, “We are the people we serve.”
Our volunteer Board of Directors is consumer-oriented and a number
of directors are recipients of services. Many of our staff are bi-lingual
and all of them are firmly committed to our mission of quality service.
CCI is nonsectarian; we accept and reflect the population as a whole.
The economic down-turn and the traumatic events of September 11, 2001 caused many employers to reduce or to eliminate insurance coverage altogether. Most of the people who lost insurance were employed in low-income jobs such as laborers, service workers, and employees of small business. For community-based safety-net providers like CCI, this has meant an increase in the number of uninsured seeking our services with no corresponding funding increase to cover the cost. CCI, like other safety-net providers, has a limited budget and can only do so much with the dollars we have. To say the safety-net system is fragile is a vast understatement. The loss of a grant or a decrease in donations has an immediate and dramatic impact on services. Of course, providers can do more if given the resources to meet the demand. Safety-net providers are some of the most, if not the most, cost-effective providers to the uninsured and Medicaid populations. We are firmly rooted in the community and serve as an economic stimulus for people seeking entry-level job opportunities. Local and state governments need to do more in both good and bad economic times to underwrite the safety-net providers’ efforts. We are proud of our accomplishments during the
past 30 years. And we know there is more we can do. To set our standards
even higher, we are pursuing JCAHO accreditation, a rigorous program
of quality improvement overseen by the Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Healthcare Organizations. And, as always, we seek to extend our
reach—again, our commitment to access—with new sites and
services. At Community Clinic, we believe there is no intrinsic
reason why a nonprofit health provider should not offer the same
or better quality of care and range of services as a medical group
that is doing it for profit. It may be more difficult; it may require
a complex system of outreach, cooperation, and partnership that
a for-profit entity does not have to undertake. And it certainly
requires a level of dedication that goes above and beyond what many
can imagine. That is what the Board, our visitors, and our patients
see in our wonderful staff and volunteers, the people who every
day come to work to make a difference solving this problem of “access
to care.” |
