Columbia River Health

Programs: The purpose of columbia river community health services (crchs) is to protect and improve the quality of life for all people, particularly the medically underserved and vulnerable people, by providing access to high quality primary and preventative healthcare. Crchs provided 9,872 medical visits to the citizens of morrow county regardless of a person's ability to pay. Crchs provided $176,921 in charity care in 2016. In addition, crchs utilizes a sliding fees schedule up to 200% of the federal poverty guidelines. For applicants that qualify, based on income and family size, a portion of their charges may be foregone for a nominal or flat fee. We have combined the vaccinations for children (vfc) program with our sports physical program. When adolescents come in for their sports physicals, their immunizations are reviewed and updated at that time. This has brought a lot of the adolescents up-to-date on their vaccines. This is also true for children who come in for well child exams. Our vaccination record has gotten attention from multiple entities, including the state's vfc program, for having such a high volume of vaccines, for our area. Our dental program is in place for those who are qualified as low income and have no dental insurance. In 2016 we had 301 encounters, most for emergency extractions and restorative work. We work with advantage dental clinics for emergency treatments, medical teams international for restorative treatment, and prodental comes onsite to perform dental cleanings. We have a 1. 0 fte x-ray tech with digital x-ray technology available. A language line is available for any non-english speaking patient. The language line service is used anywhere from 15 to 180 minutes per month. It varies from month to month, but we are glad it is available for the patient, when it is needed. Our mental health/behavioral health program is contracted through elwood koenig, lcsw. Again, it is for the uninsured, low income patients. Our pharmacy program is administered by capture rx, who contracts with local pharmacies to dispense 340b drugs. This program is controlled by capture rx and all of our patients are eligible. A computer program scrubs the prescriptions, and gives them the better pricing of the pharmacist stock and the 340b pricing. The meds are dispensed by the contracted pharmacies, and restocked by capture rx. They bill us for the meds restocked and also issue us payments from proceeds from the program. We are an out stationed outreach worker (osow) with the state of oregon. We provide assistance with the oregon health plan application process (medicaid). Free transportation is still provided for our service area patients. Spanish-english bilingual staff is throughout the various departments, to assist with our high number of spanish speaking only patients. Our referral coordinator has been identified as a "best practice," by hrsa. Her work flow and process has increased the efficiency of referring patients to specialists and sending and receiving all needed medical records and images. Patients receive a customized packet of information for their specialist visit, the specialist receives all pertinent documentation and paperwork, and our providers receive confirmations of these visits and the follow-up reports. As a whole, we had a total of 24. 3% of our patients being uninsured. We saw a decrease in our unisnured by 5. 5% from the previous year, due to the availability of medicaid being opened up for adults in oregon. Medicaid and medicare made up 36. 7% of our patient population. This is an 14. 2% increase from last year.