Officials this morning unveiled a nonprofit corporation aimed at taking advantage of existing resources to improve access to health care in southwest Missouri.
The Springfield-Greene County Regional Health Commission made its debut during an announcement at Community Foundation of the Ozarks with representatives of its 17 agency collaborators, including the Springfield-Greene County Health Department and the three local hospitals, on hand.
Plans for the organization, which is based on others across the country, including the St. Louis Regional Health Commission, have been under way for about 18 months. Carmen Parker Bradshaw has been selected as executive director; she spent the last two years with the health department and previously was a fellow at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The group is governed by a 17-member board that includes two governor-appointed members who should be named within a month, Bradshaw said. Its goals range from improving access to care to enhancing coordination between care providers and increasing community awareness about the services available. A major priority on the group's to-do list is to give people better access to primary care physicians and preventative care, in an effort to reduce emergency room visits.
Also on the agenda is the creation of a community advisory board, for which applications will be made available within six months. The commission intends to schedule community forums, as well.
In 2007, 14 percent of the Greene County population was uninsured, and Medicaid and Medicare each represented another 13 percent of the population, meaning about one in every three people did not have private insurance.
"It's going to take many, many years for the federal government to look at health care reform and come up with an algorithm strong enough that it can touch on every aspect of access to care," Bradshaw said. "It's not a coverage problem solely, it's not a provider problem solely, and it's not a health care problem solely. It's a community problem."
The commission will have an operating budget of $327,000 for each of its first two years, with about 65 percent directed to projects and programs and 35 percent directed to operating costs. The funding is partly provided by a challenge grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health. To match the grant, CoxHealth, St. John's Health System and the Springfield-Greene County Health Department each contributed $50,000; Jordan Valley Community Health Center contributed $20,000; Ozarks Community Hospital contributed $5,000; and Greene County Medical Society contributed $2,000. All contributions will be matched for the second year.[[In-content Ad]]
Dame Chiropractic LLC emerged as the new name of Harshman Chiropractic Clinic LLC with the purchase of the business; Leo Kim added a second venture, Keikeu LLC, to 14 Mill Market; and Mercy Springfield Communities opened its second primary care clinic in Ozark.
