2000s Decade Award Winner: Jordan Valley Community Health Center

Since 2002, the Jordan Valley Community Health Center has grown to 185 employees from nine, but its focus on providing access to affordable care hasn’t wavered.

As a federally qualified health center, or FQHC, the clinic provides a health safety net to area individuals who otherwise might have a hard time finding care from other providers.

The center sees about 30,000 patients a year, says Jon Mooney, and about 85 percent of those –including Medicaid patients – are uninsured or underinsured.

While reform will change the rules for Medicaid coverage, boosting it to 133 percent of the federal poverty level from 85 percent, Miller said that shift could be problematic because federal Medicaid picks up only 60 percent of each dollar for care, putting pressure on state coffers.

Jordan Valley Community Health Center was founded by a group of citizens who saw an unfilled need for medical services for that particular patient group in the Ozarks, Mooney said. In the beginning, it offered only basic medical and dental services.

In 2009, the center had operating revenues of $12.5 million, with more than half – $6.5 million – going toward its annual payroll.

Jordan Valley President/CEO Brooks Miller told Springfield Business Journal in April that the center gets about 9 percent of its annual budget from federal grants, with the remainder coming from Medicaid, Medicare and sliding-scale, self-pay patients, as well as a few privately insured individuals. 


Just as the center has grown its employee base, it also has added to the services it provides. Mooney says the goal is to provide all forms of primary care, including medical, dental, behavioral, optometry, pharmacy and X-ray services.

Jordan Valley opened a clinic in Marshfield in February 2008. In 2009, the Marshfield clinic relocated to a 4,500-square-foot site that has four medical exam rooms and four dental exam rooms, according to previous Springfield Business Journal coverage.

The center has physically expanded its Springfield operations as well, moving from 630 W. Kearney St. in July 2009 to 70,000 square feet in the L.E. Cox Building, 440 E. Tampa St., which also houses a state crime lab. Its dental facility, 618 N. Benton, has grown to 19 dental operatories for routine care, two urgent-care operatories and three surgical suites, according to www.jvchc.com.

In 2009, the center added a women’s clinic, an on-staff pediatrician and a pedodontist, or children’s dentist.

The Our Healthy Start program, funded in part by a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of
Health & Human Services, was launched last year and brings together the health center, WIC, St. John’s Health System and the Doula Foundation to provide expanded health services to women and babies, according to previous Springfield Business Journal coverage.

“We are partners in a variety of things,” says WIC program coordinator Mary Ellison. “We share some of the same patients—we call our clients participants – and many of our participants access health care through Jordan Valley.”

The health center also works with Springfield Public Schools on initiatives to provide emergency dental care for children and send a nurse practitioner to schools to see children who don’t have another care provider, said Jean Grabeel, coordinator of health services for the school district.

“These are wonderful programs that help keep kids in school, and they help us to help those kids move toward academic success, because at the core of everything is good health,” Grabeel says.[[In-content Ad]]