$1.5 million federal grant will help provide expanded medical services to underprivileged
EL CENTRO – The new Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo El Centro branch, once completed in the near future, will be furnished with state of the art medical equipment thanks to a $1,584,454 passthrough grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Commerce and funneled through the Imperial County Community and Economic Development Department.
The money will be deposited into a special grant account for use by Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo.
There is a long list of items that will be purchased for the new clinic, Sara Sanders, Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo director of resource development, said over the phone from her Brawley office on Tuesday morning.
“There is a whole list, from exam tables and wheelchairs up to X-ray equipment and dental equipment,” she said.
Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo is a private, non-profit corporation that provides an array of comprehensive primary care services to residents throughout Imperial and Riverside counties at about 12 existing locations.
The grant money will allow Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo to offer expanded services to its patients in El Centro, Sanders said.
When it is completed, the new 40,000-square-feet clinic under construction north of Kohl’s on I.V. Commons Drive, will provide a one-stop shop for patients seeking medical care. Not only will patients be able to be seen by a doctor onsite, they may also have their eyes examined by an ophthalmologist, their teeth cleaned by a dentist and get prescriptions filled before walking out the front door.
That means folks without a reliant means of transportation, or who must pay bus fare or for a taxi, only have to make one trip to get their medical needs addressed.
“Transportation is a huge access barrier,” Sanders said. “Our current patients go in and see a doctor, then have to figure out how they are going to drive to a pharmacy. And then, if they have any lab work, they have to drive to a separate lab.”
Now “everything will be right there in house,” Sanders said.
The new clinic, which will be larger than the current clinic at 651 Wake Ave., will benefit a large proportion of underprivileged residents in the El Centro area, Sanders said, a majority of which are reliant on Medi-Cal to pay for their medical needs.
“It will increase capacity,” she said. “It is open to the entire community, so we will be able to take on more patients. Even our El Centro clinic now is our fastest growing clinic, so there will be more exam rooms to accommodate more patients and more services. We are expanding our radiology departments and our behavioral health departments. It is pretty much to increase capacity in anticipation of our patient load almost doubling.”
Estimates about how many patients are expected once the new facility opens were not available before press time Tuesday.
The clinic also will serve those without health insurance.
“We do not turn any patient away, so we offer a sliding fee scale for those that can’t afford it or have no insurance or are paying cash,” Sanders said. “We do offer some discounted rates, but the majority of our patients are on Medi-Cal. We do have a small percentage that are on private pay.”
In addition to expanded medical offerings, the new building will also house the nonprofit’s administration department, which currently is spread out among various cities in Imperial County, Sanders said.
“Right now we have a corporate office in Brawley, but it doesn’t accommodate everyone,” she said.
Facility to be leased The new facility is being built by Pacific Building Group of San Diego, which will retain ownership of the property after construction is complete, Sanders said.
“They are actually building the facility and we are going to be leasing it from them,” she said. “It is kind of a lease-toown thing. Apparently, that is kind of a common practice with medical facilities. They are building it and we will be leasing it with the option” to purchase. “We don’t actually own it at this point.”
Once the new clinic opens, the current El Centro clinic will close its doors, Sanders said.
Information about the total cost to construct the new facility was unavailable before press time Tuesday.
Expanded services reliant on grant funding
Without grant funding, Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo “wouldn’t have been able to add maybe all of those new services at one time,” Sanders said. “Maybe the process would have been a little slower in adding those new services. It might not have been brand new equipment, it could have been used equipment, so it would have impeded our overall growth.”
While renting new equipment for the new clinic was an option, “it would have been a higher expense to us,” and required loans, Sanders said.
Existing equipment at the current El Centro clinic will be transferred to other clinics in the area for use, Sanders said.
“Some of the equipment that is left over as surplus at the current El Centro clinic is going to go to some of our other clinics that need some updated equipment,” she said, noting it is the long term goal of Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo to expand services at its other clinics as well.
“We are trying to do that gradually at all of our clinics, because transportation is an issue for a lot of our patients. We try to have everything in one spot for [patients].”
Community & Economic Development
On June 8, Imperial County executed a Financial Assistance Award from the U.S. Department of Commerce through its Economic Development Administration in order to purchase medical equipment for Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo.
There is no impact from this on the county general fund, with the project being funded with combined monies from the federal government and matching funds from Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo in the amount of $316,891.
The Imperial County Board of Supervisors, during their regular meeting on July 24, voted to accept the Economic Development Administration Financial Assistance Award, and to approve an immediate amendment to the fiscal year 2018-2019 proposed budget to setup the special grant account for use by Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo, as requested by Esperanza Colio-Warren, Imperial County Community and Economic Development manager.