Meeting the need
Federally Qualified Health Centers are defined by Medicare and Medicaid statutes and funded under the Public Health Service Act. They offer:
- Eligibility for a $650,000 start-up grant.
- Enhanced Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.
- Medical malpractice coverage through the Federal Tort Claims Act.
- Medications for outpatients available at a reduced cost through the Drug Pricing Program.
- Safe Harbor to establish arrangements for goods and services.
- Access to National Health Service Corps.
- Access to the Vaccine for Children Program.
- Eligibility for various other federal grants and programs.
SOURCE: St. Johns River Rural Health Network
PALM COAST -- Flagler County needs a Federally Qualified Health Center that brings together all health care components in downtown Bunnell, especially primary and behavioral health care, within walking or bike-riding distance of some of the county's most economically disadvantaged residents.
That was one conclusion of the Flagler Community Health Assessment, a year's worth of personal interviews, summits with local healthcare providers, and hundreds of individual surveys compiled for a study conducted earlier this year by the Health Planning Council of Northeast Florida and the Flagler County Health Department. Officials summarized their findings, as well as plans for the future, at an invitation-only breakfast Wednesday.
"Many people who are able to access primary care are not getting behavioral health or substance abuse help. They just don't go," said Toni Barrett, spokeswoman for Stewart-Marchman-Act and a member of the Flagler Partnership for Community Health. "Likewise, people who are getting behavioral health or help with substance abuse are accessing primary care. There is a real need to get some integration of health care."
The study, funded through a $17,500 Florida Health Department grant via the Centers for Disease Control, was done to provide a comprehensive overview of Flagler County's health care needs for planning purposes.
The hard part starts now, said Dawn Emerick, president of the Health Planning Council of Northeast Florida, a nonprofit council that covers a seven-county area including Baker, Clay, Duval, Flagler, Nassau, St. Johns and Volusia counties.
"This is not unique to Flagler County," she said. "The needs are very similar (all over). This is all very community driven."
Ultimately, health care officials envision a health care corridor along the spine of downtown Bunnell. Creating this corridor will be key to getting $650,000 in annual grant money to maintain a Federally Qualified Health Center.
Patrick Johnson, Flagler County Health Department administrator, praised the successes of the Flagler Free Clinic, the Sheltering Tree, Feed Flagler, Access Flagler and the mobile benefits program, among others. But he said the pieces will have to be connected for officials to be able to create a competitive application for the highly sought-after federal grant money.
"Only 87 of these have been funded across the nation -- two in Florida," Johnson said. "It's very competitive. We have to have something unique. We have to piece this together as a health campus in application form. And we have to be patient."
Overall, the health of Flagler County is good, he said.
"Two years ago, Flagler was the healthiest small county in Florida," Johnson said, noting that health information reported is always a year behind. "That's when we started to head into really hard economic times, and last year we slipped a little bit. When we look at community health, we are looking at the entire community."
Top local concerns include a lack of easy access to health care, chronic diseases like diabetes, and "behavioral health" problems like drug and alcohol abuse, according to the study.
Statistically, Flagler County's percentage of adults who are smokers, obese, have high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems and high cholesterol is higher than the state average.
Johnson related that a nurse told him that if health care workers could "decrease smoking, weight, high blood pressure and cholesterol, we could solve 75 percent of the health problems."
Health care in general, he said, has moved away from the infectious diseases that were aggressively treated in the early 1900s and now is focusing more on chronic diseases that come with living a longer life.
"We all know the longer you live, you're going to probably develop some kind of chronic disease," Johnson said. "We want to live as long and as healthy as we can, but we're all going to die.
"We're trying to be younger and younger."
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