Wyoming healthcare industry looks to other funds with state cuts on the way

by Tom Lacock, Cowboy State Free Press Correspondent

CASPER–With drastic cuts in funding to local governments likely, the health community of Wyoming is bracing for more patients and the threat of less funding. However, some community health care centers have been able to keep their funding current to address the needs of their communities by relying on federal and private grant funds.

In the $3 billion proposed state budget for 2011-2012, Gov. Dave Freudenthal is recommending to the Legislature, that direct distribution from the state to local governments would drop from $145 million to $60 million.

The cuts come at a bad time for Wyoming residents. With the national economy shedding another 85,000 jobs this month, according to the Labor Department, bankruptcies are up 32 percent nationwide and 60 percent in the state of Wyoming, according to the Associated Press.

The head of the Casper-Natrona County Health Department said cuts to their budget will be on the way, and his organization is in discussions for how to maintain the same levels of service as before.

“Its not a question of whether but a question of how much,” said Casper-Natrona Department of Health Director Robert Harrington, Thursday. “For the past two years we have run at a flat budget with no increase. We have begun discussions with city and county officials concerning what to expect for the coming budget year of 2010-2011. The question will be how deep the local cuts are and how deep we will be required to go into our cash reserves. That will become a policy decision for our board of health.”

Harrington said the Casper-Natrona County Health Department gets about a quarter of its funding through city and county resources. The bulk of the department’s operations money comes through various grant funding. Among its list of services and functions, the department operates a clinic whose most common services are related to sexually transmitted disease and immunization services. Harrington said the immunization services include everything from international travel requirements to the 30,000 H1N1 doses the department managed and distributed last year.

“We are seeing a much greater demand for our services,” Harrington said. “We are getting more calls for basic healthcare services, which we do not provide. We are getting a lot of calls for sore throats and skinned knees.”

According to Harrington, those who call the Casper-Natrona Department of Health are referred to the Community Health Care Center of Central Wyoming – a Federally-funded clinic – or Healthcare for the Homeless on the Lifesteps campus.

Brenda Eickhoff-Johnson is the Executive Director for Community Action Partnership, the oversight agency for Health Care for the Homeless. She said given the funding mechanism for Health Care for the Homeless, they likely won’t be affected by the upcoming budget reductions on the state and community level.

“Seventy-five to 80 percent of our money is federal and that has remained stable,” Eickhoff-Johnson said. “We have also received a lot of stimulus money, so we have added a large amount of financial capacity in what we are able to do. However, we have also seen a large increase for the assistance that we provide with things like our rental assistance program.”

Johnson, who said the number of visits to Healthcare for the Homeless is up, said Health Care for the Homeless also receives United Way support locally as well.

Wamsutter opened its Community Health Center last week, thanks to funding by BP, $3.5 million from the State of Wyoming, the community of Wamsutter and Sweetwater County. The money has allowed Wamsutter to put up a clinic that houses a physician’s assistant, as well as a health administrator, Shannon Cash.

“As a mom of three kids, it is nice to have health care closer to home,” Cash said. “Before this we could go to Rock Springs or Rawlins, which is 40 miles away. it just depended on where you could get in.”

The Wamsutter Community Health Clinic does charge for its services, which include general health care as well as nutritional guidance services. While the money spent to build the facility was a partnership between the public and private sector, Cash said the clinic will be on its own financially soon.

“The money we have received is of course to put the building up and get supplies. Anything going forward from there is ours to be taken care of. Our goal is to get where we are going to be on our own and taking care of the things the best we can.

“Right now, we are holding strong.”

The Midwest Clinic in northern Natrona County has the look of local government – it takes up half of City Hall – but little else about it makes you think government. While it does get some utilities paid for by the city,  it otherwise operates independent of state or local funds.

“We brought the Governor in once hoping to get state funds,” said the Midwest Clinic’s Director Mike Smith. “Instead of giving us money, he decided perhaps they should do something similar in other places to save money.

“I guess that one kind of backfired on me,” Smith laughed.

Smith said the Midwest Clinic sees everything from skinned knees to cancer patients and uses EMT’s and nurses to asses patients and then treats what they can before referring them to physicians in Buffalo or Casper. Smith said the economy has seen to the clinic, which is only open Mondays and Fridays, increase its patient roster by 50 percent in the last year.

“I think the last count we had was 175 charts in the file and when you are talking about a community of 600, that is a lot of charts,” he said.

Smith said the Clinic operates on a budget of about $15-20,000 per year and receives benefit from a pair of federal grants (Experience Works) to pay two employees over the age of 55 to work in the office. Last year the clinic did receive a $282,000 appropriation from the US Senate for equipment and is now looking into a mobile clinic to serve citizens in areas of Natrona County like Powder River and Alcova. The clinic charges for lab work, but Smith says roughly “one out of 15-or-20,” people are ever billed for services. Past that, the clinic relies on donations.

“I ran the place for the first six months on $3,000,” Smith said. “I just got out, beg, cry and hang on to someone’s leg while they go down the street and run the place on whatever they give me to let them go.”

While the Midwest Clinic should be unaffected by the lack of funds coming down to cities and counties from the state budget, Smith said the Clinic does receive some help from the community that will likely continue.

“Bless their hearts, they do what they can,” Smith said of the City. “They supply us with space, with rooms and they pay the phone bill – that sort of thing. I know they are going to take some cuts. If at any point we can help them, we would do that so they don’t have to cut any existing programs or positions.

“The fact of the matter is, we take up half of town hall and its unlikely they are going to break down and not heat half of town hall.”