Health system CEO champions care for low-income patients
Naomi Fuchs, CEO of Santa Rosa Community Health, sprang into action after learning the extent of damage the Tubbs Fire caused to the health system’s largest medical facility on Oct. 9.
The exterior of the Vista Family Health Center — an outpatient facility that was not occupied that night — remained intact. But the interior, including a pharmacy, lab and dozens of exam rooms, was completely destroyed by fire, smoke and water from sprinklers.
Fuchs led the effort to set up five mobile clinics and what she called seven “clinics in a can” — clinics built inside a shipping containers. Some were in the parking lots of the eight other Santa Rosa Community Health clinics, which saw any available space converted to medical use.
“If there was an office, we kicked that person out of their office,” Fuchs said. “Twentyfour thousand people losing their doctors is a lot of people, right at the time they need us the most. We felt very committed to doing every innovative approach to delivering care we could.”
“It’d be hard to think of a more visionary leader than Naomi,” said Elizabeth Brown, CEO of Community Foundation Sonoma County. The foundation provides grants to local nonprofits, including Santa Rosa Community Health, the county’s largest health system serving low-income patients on Medi-Cal insurance and the uninsured.
Brown has also worked with Fuchs on Health Action, a group of city and county officials, health care executives and nonprofit leaders working to improve health for all residents of Sonoma County.
“Naomi is such a powerful leader in that group in expanding what we think of as the definition of health, way beyond physical health and more about social determinants of health, thinking about poverty and education as health indicators,” Brown said.
It is not a stretch for Fuchs, 60, to connect with the lowincome patients her clinics serve: As a single mother of two in her early 20s, Fuchs was on Medi-Cal.
“I started to experience what poverty was like,” Fuchs said. “Even though I came from a middle-class, relatively privileged environment, life circumstances happen to everybody.”
After asking friends and neighbors for help, she landed a job with a consultant who was developing physician organizations. Thad led to her taking over Redwood Empire Medical Group Inc., an independent practice association for physicians.
In 2001, she took the reins of the board of directors at Southwest Community Health Center, later renamed Santa Rosa Community Health. At the time, it had one medical center and 43 employees. Under Fuchs’ watch, it has grown to nine sites, including a dental clinic, and 500 workers.
“I fell in love with the work, the mission, the people involved, and it’s changed me as much as I’ve changed the organization,” Fuchs said.
» “It’d be hard to think of a more visionary leader than Naomi.” Elizabeth Brown, CEO of Community Foundation Sonoma County