UnityPoint Clinic to provide family practice physicians
After a special closed session meeting May 13, the Greene County Medical Center board of trustees approved a partnership with UnityPoint Clinic to place a family medicine clinic in Jefferson.
The partnership comes six weeks after Greene County Medical Center broke ground on a $22.5 million project that includes a new addition and extensive renovations to the medical center.
“Upgrading the facilities is one piece of the puzzle. Another important piece is providing better care coordination for our patients,” said board of trustees chairman Jim Schleisman. “Our long time affiliation with UnityPoint Health – Des Moines, and now this partnership with UnityPoint Clinic, will allow us to use resources and expertise from one of the country’s largest health systems.”
Medical center chief executive officer Carl Behne said in a GreeneCountyNewsOnline interview Tuesday that an affiliation with UnityPoint Clinic has been under discussion since 2012. He said the medical center is focused on care coordination, being patient-centered and physician-centered. “That’s why we’re going this route… This is the first and next logical step. This announcement (of the Clinic affiliation) is even more important than the building project itself. The building project is extremely important, but nothing is more important than being focused around the new models of healthcare that we need to adapt to, that the system is requiring us to adapt to, and also, that patients are demanding that we adapt to in providing greater value and providing coordinated care. We’ve got to be much more integrated as a delivery system in order to do that. This is the first step in working towards that,” Behne said.
A sheet of frequently asked questions (FAQs) prepared by the medical center explains that changes in healthcare overall and changes in healthcare reimbursement models make effectiveness and efficiency imperative for medical centers. According to the FAQs, “the best way to improve patient care and hold down costs is to have providers affiliated with the medical center so care can be delivered efficiently with the highest quality and be convenient to our patients.”
McFarland Clinic PC has operated a clinic with family practice physicians in Jefferson for many years. Behne was reluctant Tuesday to talk about the impact of the trustees’ decision on McFarland Clinic. Behne said that patients would continue to have a choice of healthcare providers. “What this agreement is doing is providing us an opportunity to look at expanding coverage in Greene County and having that expanded coverage focused on care coordination, and having basically the aim of improved access, reasonable or affordable cost, and best outcomes. We view this as a great step forward,” he said.
Behne said UnityPoint Clinic will eventually have several fulltime healthcare providers in Jefferson, although details, including where a clinic would be located, still need to be worked out. The new clinic may or may not be located on the Greene County Medical Center campus.
The FAQ sheet emphasizes that it was a local decision to partner with UnityPoint Clinic. “Greene County Medical Center is committed to the people of Greene County and is governed by a board of trustees who live and work here. The board is charged with building, maintaining and operating a medical center for the people of this county. After considerable research, study and negotiation, the board concluded UnityPoint Clinic shared its values when it came to providing quality care in the community of the patients being served. This partnership was forged here and decisions about patient care will be made here.”
McFarland Clinic-Jefferson physicians were not part of the conversation prior to the medical center trustees’ announcement. “We were unaware of this decision being made by the hospital board and administration,” McFarland Clinic-Jefferson physician Dr. James Gerdes said Tuesday. “McFarland Clinic will continue to provide patients the same exceptional and coordinated care they have received for the past several decades.”
