What is an intrapreneurial opportunity within the Community Health Center and it's impact with respect to both the level of effort and resources needed and the potential benefits to the organization. ? Intrapreneurial opportunities are a very different pa

RUNNING HEAD: CHC SWOT ANALYSIS Reaves 9

Briana Reaves

Dr. Ducharme

MBA 515

Southern New Hampshire University

SWOT ANALYSIS

The Community Health Center is an organization that boasts in the provision of health care to patients with health needs in the areas of dentistry, behavioral health, and medical care, all of which are important to the contribution of a healthy population. CHC has been able to develop 14 different primary care branches across the state of Connecticut. Prior to developing these primary care sites, CHC first started off only offering dental care to patients. Mark Maselli who is the CEO of CHC, discovered through a crisis center that problems people brought to the center all shared a common characteristic, they all originated from the lack of early and consistent access to good, affordable healthcare (Center, 2016). . CHC has been a very successful non-profit organization over the past 40 years, but the success of the company could not be accomplished without analyzing the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. CHC tries to minimize their weaknesses and take advantage of their opportunities, so they can continue to provide affordable healthcare to people in need.

Strength

CHC has many strengths that help contribute to the success of the company. As stated previously, the organization started off only offering free dental care to patients. This care took place on a second floor of an apartment building. Today, CHC now has 14 different primary care sites that offer, medical, dental, and behavioral health services. These service locations include 51 licensed school-based health centers, six homeless shelter clinics, and preventive dentistry that is delivered in nearly 200 schools through their mobile dental clinic. (Center, 2016) Overall, CHC caters to over 145,000 patients daily and will continue to increase its population by offering more services. Patients are provided with care regardless of if they have insurance or not. If the patient is uninsured, CHC allows them to bring in their proof of income and based off their income they would be placed on a sliding fee scale. If it determined that a patient receives low income, they only have to pay $20 for services rendered. They will also not have to be charged to get their blood work done. Having a sliding fee scale, ensures that all people have access to healthcare. CHC also has an “Access to Care” department who helps individuals obtain insurance. Before a patient is put on a sliding fee scale, they have to speak with an Access to Care coordinator. The Access to Care coordinator looks to see if the individual is eligible for insurance and if they are, they help them apply. They also do outreach events to help people in the community that are insured to obtain insurance as well.

Within CHC, specialty services are also offered at all of the primary care sites. These specialty services include, nutritionists/diabetes educator, chiropractors, podiatrists, OBGYN, retinopathy, HIV/AIDS care, etc. Having these specialty services, allows patient to be seen right at their primary care site instead of having to travel somewhere else. If CHC does not offer a specialty services that a patient needs, the referral department helps connect patients with specialists that accept their insurance. For example, CHC does not offer gastroenterology, so if a patient needs to see a specialist, the referral department will find a specialist closes to where the patient lives and also ensure that the provider accepts the insurance.

The Weitzman Institute is a research center that CHC founded in order to improve the organization’s daily operations. The research that is conducted through the institute helps community health center monitor changes that need to be made in order to provide efficient healthcare. For example, the research center developed PainNet. PainNet is an online learning community that helps provide essential tools and resources to help providers tackle issues of pain and prescriptions for opioid management (Gianelli, 2016). It also assists providers with dealing with patients that have a complex pain or cases where pain, addiction, and mental health issues co-exist. Most providers have experienced statistically significant improvement in their knowledge about caring for patients with complex chronic pain (Gianelli, 2016). So overall, CHC’s core strengths are its ability to offer care to all people whether they have health insurance or not, deliver specialty services, and also provide research to providers, so they can ensure they are knowledgeable about the care they give.

Weakness

With many strengths, CHC also has many weaknesses that need to be addressed on a constant basis. Most of the patients of CHC have Medicare and Medicaid insurance. There are many healthcare practices that do not accept those insurances, so CHC is one of the few in the state of Connecticut that does. According to you’ve got Medicaid-Why Can’t You See the Doctor, when comparing reimbursements rate among health insurance plans, Medicaid is the lowest payer, meaning it’s not a money maker for doctors’ offices (Renter, 2015). Providers at CHC are not getting paid as much as providers that work at healthcare facilities that do not accept Medicaid insurance.

Providers are provided with incentives to help ensure that they remain at CHC for more than a year. CHC offers tuition reimbursement plans for providers. Licensed providers can earn up to $50,000 toward student loans in exchange for a 2-year commitment to a NHSC-approved site (Center, 2016). So the providers that participate in this program only end up staying with CHC for a little over 2 years.

Due to this reason, CHC experiences a high provider turnover each year. The high provider turnover rate, in turn affects the quality of care the patients receive. This affects the quality of care because each year a patient’s primary care physician has to be changed. Most of the time, patients develop relationships with their providers and are able to maintain their health. When they have to see a new provider, it can be difficult for them because the new provider will have to learn their medical history. It also becomes an issue with patients when the new providers they see try to change their medications because they may not agree with the previous provider’s treatment plan.

Opportunities

In September of 2017, the Community Health Center was presented with the opportunity to acquire the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center (CCMC) located in Hartford, CT. Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is a primary care clinic that specializes in medical care for children. CHC received $650,000 a year in federal funding to support the expansion (Kovner, 2016). The care of patients and their families extended beyond primary medical care to include coordination of all services that CHC offers which are all critical components of effective primary care (Kovner, 2016). This partnership did not anticipate any layoffs, so everyone was still able to stay in their job roles. With this opportunity, CHC was able to expand their services in another town in CT and CCMS was able to gain more services they it didn’t have.

One of the most important grants, CHC receives is the quality improvement grant. CHC received a $330,502 quality improvement grant from the Human Resources and Services Administration (O'hare, 2016 ). This grant is the largest of 15 awarded to community health centers. The grant was rewarded to the Community Health Center to recognize the organization for its excellence in providing high quality care to patients and to continue its quality improvement work (O'hare, 2016 ). According to Community Health Center Inc. Recieves $330,502 for Quality Improvement, CHC received the grant in recognition of the following:

· its high level of performance in the use of electronic health records to report clinical quality measure data

· its improvement in one or more clinical quality measures demonstrating a significant improvement to patient’s health

· receiving the best overall clinical outcomes among all health centers

· patient centered medical home status for its service delivery site

This grant allows CHC to continue to provide efficient healthcare services. Without this grant, the organization would not have the opportunity to improve the quality of care that is provided to patients. This grant will also allow CHC to continue to strive to become better each year. It is not easy to obtain a grant such as this one, so this can also be used as a motivational tool for the organization.

Another opportunity CHC was presented with is being able to partner with Quest Diagnostics. Quest Diagnostics offers clinical laboratory services to patients. At each of the 14 primary care sites, a Quest Lab is located at the front of the entrances of each facility. This was a great opportunity for both CHC and Quest Diagnostics because right after a patient gets out of an appointment, they are able to go get there bloodwork done right then and there at a Quest lab. Having a quest lab at each site also decreases many issues that can occur. For example, sometimes there can be an issue with the electronic health system sending over blood work the provider ordered. So since a quest lab is located right at the facility, CHC’s front staff can access the patient’s chart and print out the blood work order. If there was no quest lab at CHC and the patient had to go somewhere else to get there bloodwork done, they would have to wait a while for the phlebotomist to contact the provider to re-send the blood work order. Many patients have difficulty with transportation, so it makes it very convenient for them to not have to travel somewhere else to get their bloodwork done.

Threat

CHC can face the threat of not receiving funds from the government. Since the organization is federally funded, it has to maintain a good market share in order for the government to provide a sufficient amount of funding. Currently, CHC has a market share of 9.24% (Cresson & Tollen, 2010). This is a fairly good percentage of the market for the hospital to occupy, which becomes a motivating factor for the government in the state of Connecticut, as well as the federal government to consider in matters to do with funding. To make sure that the market share of CHC does not decrease, patients have to continue to acquire insurance and CHC has to continue to receive visits from newly insured patients.

According to Community Health Centers: Opportunities and Challenges of Health Reform, the law anticipates and underscores that the real engine driving long-term health center growth is the expansion of insurance coverage for low-income populations (Comission, 2010). So the success of the expansion for health centers will be based off of the ability of patients to gain access to health insurance and for health center to attain and attract newly insured patients. If there are not enough individuals that obtain insurance, the health center will not expand. Therefore, there will not be any investments if the health centers are not expanding.

The role of threats play a major part when CHC receives visits from patients. Some of the threats that can take place include bankruptcies, adverse changes in the demography, slowdowns in the economy, adverse policies in government, increase in competition and changes in insurance plans.

Bankruptcies take place because of CHC not being able to receive enough patients with insurance coverage given their low incomes which act as a discouragement to insurance subscriptions.

Demographic changes may mean that people may be shifting to other areas meaning that the health center may not be able to access funding as a result of a lower number of people accessing insurance. Changing insurance plans has the same effect as the demographic changes, with a reduced number of people, either being covered or having access to insurance.

The higher the number of hospitals providing these services, the lower the amount of funding the health center receives from the government. Economic slowdowns lead to reduced amounts of insurance or a reduced number of people taking on insurance covers.

Changes in government policies may result in community health center not receiving funding for not meeting required objectives, such as failing to have new patients with insurance. There are several opportunities available for CHC. Lack of dominant competition since there are only several other health centers, or hospitals that are able to provide health care needs to the population in need of insurance coverage. This is done while still managing to do so across Connecticut, and not only from a single branch. In this case, therefore, it is possible for CHC to acquire funding from the government.

Competition continuously increases when there is an increase in the number of hospitals providing the same services as CHC with examples such as Danbury, New Milford, and Norwalk Hospitals (Berkowitz, 2011).

References Center, C. H. (2016, July). Our History. Retrieved from Community Health Center: http://www.chc1.com/About-Us/Our-History Comission, K. (2010). Community Health Centers: Opportunities and Challenges of Health Reform. Washington, DC: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Gianelli, L. (2016). Tools and Strategies for Treating Chronic Pain, Reducing Opioid Use Now Available Free to Health Care Providers. Middletown, CT: CHC. Kovner, J. (2016, April 25). Community Health Center Acquires Connecticut Children's Clinic In Hartford. Hartford Courant. O'hare, M. (2016 ). Community Health Center, Inc. Receives $330,502 for Quality Improvement. Middletown, CT: CHC. Renter, E. (2015). You've got Medicaid-Why Can't You See the Doctor? U.S. News.