Quality Culture Series Promotes Operations Management

On May 8, 2012, the San Francisco Quality Culture Series (QCS) conducted its second Alumni Session, on Operations Management:  Modeling, Analyzing and Optimizing Processes.  The session was conducted by Kumar Rajaram, PhD, professor of operations and technology management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and attended by more than 70 staff from local primary care safety net organizations.  Operations management provides tools for making health care organizations more effective in meeting capacity, reducing client wait times, improving client service, and reducing inventory and operational costs.  The curriculum included definitions, examples and framework for operations management; effective scale-up management; managing the impact of variability; and improving operations and customer satisfaction in a safety net primary care clinic.

The San Francisco QCS is sponsored by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and administered by the Center for the Health Professions at UCSF, in collaboration with the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium, San Francisco Health Plan, and San Francisco Department of Public Health.  San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium also serves as the federally funded Area Health Education Center (AHEC) for San Francisco.

Congratulations to Mission Neighborhood Health Center on an amazing front page article in the Chronicle!

Mission Neighborhood Health Center is a community based and community governed nonprofit health center in the heart of the San Francisco Mission District.  In 1989, in response to a growing crisis, call HIV/AIDS, Mission Neighborhood Health Center took a bold national step and created Clinica Esperanza, Clinic of Hope.  Since that time, patients living with HIV and AIDS find a Patient Centered Health Home that provides outstanding clinical care with a wide variety of support service.  Enjoy this recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a clinic that is making a difference. 

Life as CEO, Running a Consortium

As I continue in my 21 years of service with the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium, I would like to take a few minutes to reflect on our work.  SFCCC is a partnership of the City’s ten leading nonprofit health centers.  Last year they provided services to over 91,000 uninsured, Medi-Cal, Medicare and Healthy Family patients.  SFCCC strives to offer leadership and support our Partners in 4 key areas: Access to Care; Workforce Development; Maximization of Valuable Resources; and Health Policy. 

Through Strategic advice and consulting we work with our Partners to serve more patients, achieve better outcomes and lead the way through upcoming changes in healthcare delivery transformation.  SFCCC Operational benefits include our Partners gaining access to operational benefits such as volume purchasing discounts, health information technology and other consulting services.  Our Financial scope of services supports our Partners to receive strategic fundraising assistance and funding for new programs through the Consortium’s strong funding partnership.  And our work in Health Policy strives to assure that our elected and appointed officials create and maintain legislation that supports access to care for all patients in a local based, governed health center.  As President/CEO of SFCCC, it is both a pleasure and honor to work with our amazing Partners.  J 

Happy Birthday Curry Senior Center!!!!

Over 40 years ago, San Francisco’s first Department of Public Health Director, Dr. Francis Curry, had a dream.  He dreamed that seniors living in the Tenderloin could go to a medical site that would understand the needs of being older, often time living in isolation and with limited income.    

Dr. Curry, a physician before his time could be consider one of the early founders of a clinical practice known today at Gerontology.  Gathering civic and business leaders together, Dr. Curry created North of Market Senior Services at 333 Turk Street.  On Friday night, April 27th over 200 people gathered in celebration at the Fairmont Crown Room to celebrate Curry Senior Center’s 40th Anniversary.     

SFCCC President/CEO John Gressman shares a thought about Curry.  “Curry is a rocking and rolling center.   At Curry there is no wrong door for entrance into their wide array of services.  The health center has committed, passionate staff who understands what means physically, emotionally, mentally to be a person over 55.  Open every day of the year for breakfast and lunch with a take out for dinner, healthy meals supports the seniors.  And to go to the Over 80, Over 90 and Over 100 birthday parties is fantastic to see people break out of isolation, have fun and tell stories of the ‘good old days’.  Day programs, behavioral health care are integral in Curry’s service model.  And the 30+ apartments offer many Curry residents an option to life off the streets.  On behalf of SFCCC and your fellow 9 Partner Health Centers, Happy Birthday!”

SFCCC Celebrates 30th Anniversary!

SFCCC is 30 years old this year! Our organization was formed in 1982 by a network of community-based health centers. The mission – then and now – is to develop programs and advocate for policies that increase access to community-based primary care for all San Franciscans, targeting the uninsured and underserved. We work in four distinct areas:  Strategic, Operational, Financial, and Policy. Strategically, we help our Partner Health Centers to think about and plan for their future. This includes strategic positioning in the market place, strategic partnerships and creating new and more effective systems of coordinated, integrated care. Operational efficiencies help to generate higher levels of a patient experience and provider satisfaction. We all recognize that our greatest asset is our clinic staff so we try to create ways that refine systems that support their work and expand access to care. Financially, we work closely with our Partners to create strategies that will help stretch the funds they receive. This can range from group purchasing to financial system assessment to assure they are capturing all the funding available to them. And finally, Policy and Advocacy are the foundation of the work we complete.  We need to have laws and regulations that support the work of the health centers. We’ll be celebrating all year!

San Francisco Clinics Attend Day the Capitol

SFCCC Partner Health Centers, Glide Health Services, Haight Ashbury-Walden House, Mission Neighborhood Health Center, North East Medical Service, and South of Market Health Center joined SFCCC and hundreds of clinics across California to take their message to State Legislators.

With over 350 people in attendance, health center community board members, staff and patients joined to educate legislators and their key staff how damaging Governor Brown’s proposal would be to the clinics’ 5M patients. Time and again, clinic leaders explained how re-structuring the clinic Medi Cal system would result in over $100M in loss in revenue. Leaders and patient explained how access to care would be greatly diminished or lost, clinics would be forced to close and new clinics sites planned for being open abandoned. SFCCC and Clinic Leadership applauded the Governor for addressing the State deficit, but reminded our elected officials that without healthy individuals and families, cost of emergency rooms will skyrocket and people will miss work, resulting in loss State and Local tax revenues.

What happens when doctors share their visit notes with patients?

Recently, the SFCCC Board of Director’s Quality Improvement Committee discussed likely benefits, as well as potential challenges, of sharing with patients, summaries of their visits or actual visit notes, summaries of, or even the patient’s entire medical record. The discussion was triggered by a discussion of NCQA Patient Centered Medical Home Must Pass Element 3C: Care Management, which includes factors such as:

3. Gives the patient/family a written plan of care

5. Gives the patient/family a clinical summary at each relevant visit

As it happens, this will be the topic of a National eHealth Collaborative's NeHC University webinar tomorrow. Data on expectations showed that participating providers and patients, on the whole looked favorably on the process, while non-participating providers had less favorable view. The discussion tomorrow, which will review these results and other findings, looks to be very interesting:

Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 2 p.m. EDT, National eHealth Collaborative's NeHC University will continue its series on consumer engagement with health IT by asking the question: What happens when doctors share their visit notes with patients? This program will provide an update on the groundbreaking OpenNotes project that has been studying the effects of opening up doctors’ notes to their patients to determine how it can improve the patient-physician relationship and encourage consumer engagement in managing health. The expectations and initial data from the study were released in the December 2011 Annals of Internal Medicine with some interesting revelations. This program will discuss more findings from the project, including its implications for the practice of medicine, physician-patient communications, and patient empowerment.