Booming demand for low-cost health care is forcing Cherry Street Health Services to expand. The agency's Westside Health Center will double in size in the next year.

 

Cherry Street Health Growing
By Kevin Murphy

 

GRAND RAPIDS — Cherry Street Health Services is the largest provider of health and dental services to the low-income community in Grand Rapids, but it's not big enough.

 

Despite having tripled in size in the past decade, the nonprofit health-care provider simply cannot provide enough services for the area's uninsured and underprivileged.

 

According to Cherry Street Health Services Executive Director Chris Shea, this phenomenon can be explained two ways.

 

First, as the cost of health care continues to rise precipitously, more families cannot afford the medical and dental visits they require, so they seek out providers that offer subsidized, low-cost care. Cherry Street Health uses a sliding scale system for payment, with a minimum charge of $15, so its services are accessible to nearly everyone.

 

The other reason for the rise in demand has been the downturn in the local economy. Shea said that individuals whose jobs have been outsourced or whose medical insurance has been cut make up an increasing percentage of the system's patients.

 

Although Cherry Street Health Services provides more than 120,000 health-care visits each year to low- to moderate-income families, it must constantly turn patients away for lack of capacity. Shea said that Cherry Street's dental services turn away an average of 300 patients each month. That's more than one for each hour of operation.

 

In order to remove the congestion in the system and to meet a higher percentage of the demand for its services, Cherry Street Health Services is expanding.

 

Shea said that he is working to increase his organization's partnership with the Grand Rapids Public Schools. Cherry Street Health recently received grants to create in-school health centers at Union, Creston and Ottawa Hills high schools. Shea hopes that getting kids to visit these clinics will take some burden off the other clinics.

 

Other expansion plans come as part of a $3.5 million capital campaign begun last fall. To date, about half of that total has been raised. Among other things, the campaign will double the size of the Westside Health Center and provide over $1 million in technological upgrades throughout Cherry Street Health's nine locations. Those updates include a switchover to Internet-based phone systems and new practice management software that will allow all medical records to be maintained electronically.

 

"Essentially, this will all improve the care we provide," Shea said.

 

The expansion goals are ambitious. Funds from the capital campaign would support new staff additions. New dentists and doctors would help reduce by 3,000 the number of patients turned away and increase the level of pediatric and prenatal care visits by nearly 13,000 each year. Shea described the need for more prenatal, perinatal and pediatric care as "kind of desperate."

 

The building improvements to the West Side facility are ambitious, as well. The 100-year-old facility, formerly home to El Matador Tortilla Factory, is one of several buildings that could gain historical recognition if the Stockbridge neighborhood were to be recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. As such, Shea said, there is a desire to rejuvenate the building in a way that honors its historic character. While giving a nod to the past, Cherry Street Health and contractor Rockford Construction will be looking to the future. They are seeking LEED certification "to provide an environmentally responsible space for patients and staff."

 

With the total remodel and construction project for the West Side facility slated for completion in spring 2006, Cherry Street Health Services is poised for major, visible growth in the community. For Shea, that is both welcome and troubling. Growth means meeting the demand for services, but it could also mean increasing it.

 

"We're not as well known an agency as our size would suggest," he said.

 

More people learning about the agency's services could mean another jump in demand. If that happens, Cherry Street Health Services will once again find itself in a familiar position of doing everything it can to serve the health-care needs of the community and having to turn people away.     BJX