Spokane7
58°
January 20, 2011 in City
Clinics face crisis, CHAS chief says
State cuts would place services, poorest at risk
Looming state budget cuts threaten to unravel a network of Spokane health clinics that treat the region’s poorest people.
Peg Hopkins, executive director of the Community Health Association of Spokane, said the budget proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire would carve $9 million from her organization’s $30 million budget. Such a move would likely result in deep layoffs among CHAS’s 300-plus employees, erode services, and lengthen wait times for the 30,000 patients who go to CHAS clinics each year to see a doctor.
“We’re in crisis,” Hopkins said during an interview with The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board this week. She noted that by March 1, CHAS will have to begin dismantling its services unless a source of money can be secured. It’s the latest call for help by CHAS at a time when demand for medical treatment it provides is at an all-time high.
The governor has decried her own budget proposal, made in December, and challenged the Legislature to do better when trying to find $512 million in budget savings.
Leaders from both parties have said subsidized health programs for children and the poor may be trimmed, but must not be erased.
The governor has proposed eliminating all subsidized insurance from the Basic Health Plan, a program that covers 66,000 people.
Other program cuts that would hamper CHAS include zeroing out the Disability Lifeline Grants. This program helps the neediest state residents including about 1,400 in Spokane.
CHAS, founded 16 years ago, has grown into one of the region’s largest clinics. It offers a sliding fee scale for patients and does not reject patients if they are unable to pay. Many patients earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, yet have jobs that don’t offer health insurance plans or can’t afford it.
Hopkins said 40 percent of CHAS patients have no medical insurance.
CHAS has recently committed money and effort toward emergency dental care – a service that is not provided at local hospitals. Emergency rooms do not employ dentists, said Dr. Jeff Collins, chief medical officer at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center. Instead, such patients might be given antibiotics and a painkiller to treat an abscess, for example.
“We turn them back out without fixing their problem,” he said.
Hopkins said CHAS will have to shrink its new emergency dental program in hopes of being able to at least treat the direst cases that could lead to other health complications.
The state has already stopped providing Medicaid coverage for adult dental care that is not considered an emergency.
Hopkins has been attempting to save the clinics from tough cutbacks, asking cash-strapped local government agencies for grants and attempting to work with hospitals and other nonprofit agencies and foundations.
“We’re going to do everything we can,” she said, adding that she worries publicity may discourage patients in need of care from visiting the clinics.
Parishes giving $1.5 million toward settling sex cases 
lewis8457 on January 20 at 8:06 a.m.
CHAS is a great place, that have helped me many times when no one else would.
When you call for an appointment to see a doctor and you tell them you don’t have insurance they don’t hang up on you.
READER27 on January 20 at 8:32 a.m.
I find it interesting that our Governor would cut this particular program so severely. When our nation is now trying to pass laws to see that everyone has health care and what not. Why jepordize the one place lower income families can go to get good quality health care they can actually afford! CHAS’s budget is already tight as it is, luckily I have been a patient there for years but i know that NEW patient’s have at least a 3-week wait in a non emergency case to get an appointment. Again I will have to say I did NOT vote for her and these are the reason’s why. I do believe we need to turn our state’s spending and budget problems around, but the only reason we need to is because for YEARS there was a gross mismanagement of funds, overspending and poor choices on what to spend it on! Once again the average, hardworking, TAXPAYER, is forced to shoulder the weight of our Governments mistakes. Time for Gregoire to put the shoe on the other foot! I’d like her to live off my income for one YEAR, and see what she decides to cut then! I don’t think she’d be making the same choices
Ninch on January 20 at 9:30 a.m.
Please be aware that Obamacare is health INSURANCE reform and does not address health care ACCESS.
In many locations, having health insurance (including Medicaid or Medicare) does not mean that one can access health care. Also Obamacare does not allow doctor-owned hospitals and many projects have been stopped.
Because of the false assumption that Obamacare will provide medical care to all, local and state elected officials are making bad decisions regarding health care funding.
estaeheli on February 21 at 10:06 a.m.
Obviously, you have NO CLUE what you are talking about. The national health care program is just that: every U.S. citizen gets health care.
The Republicans are the ones who say that the entire problem will be solved by changing tort laws and allowing insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines—ploys to simply make people think they have a plan when they don’t have one.
The right thing to do, in any society, is to provide health care for everybody, and that is what President Obama has set into motion. The insurance companies are “mad as heck” and spread ignorant statement like the one you made.