CCAP wins $929,000 grant to expand Primary Care Partners

John Howell
Posted 9/22/15

David Lauterbach, president and CEO of the Kent Center, described the situation the mental health care agency faced last Friday to an audience including U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

CCAP wins $929,000 grant to expand Primary Care Partners

Posted

David Lauterbach, president and CEO of the Kent Center, described the situation the mental health care agency faced last Friday to an audience including U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse.

In 2009, he said, the Kent Center won a federal grant to establish a primary care practice at its facility in Warwick that would be fully integrated with behavioral health. The center was licensed as an ambulatory care facility, and the vision was to establish a practice with several physicians serving 4,000 patients.

But because community health centers don’t have access to the higher Medicaid reimbursements given federally qualified health centers, the facility’s growth was stymied. The Kent Center grant was coming to an end. Without another full-time physician, it looked like it would have to close. Rather than failing, what the Kent Center started became the seed to something larger.

On Friday, Reed and Whitehouse announced a 17-month, $920,000 grant of Affordable Care Act funding to the Comprehensive Community Action Program (CCAP). CCAP, which has a federally qualified health center ensuring higher Medicaid reimbursements, is now operating Warwick Primary Care Partners.

“They had access to doctors and federal assistance to sustain Primary Care Partners,” Lauterbach said of CCAP. “They also share the Kent Center vision of fully integrated primary care and behavioral health and a strong commitment to serve the people in our community.”

As the senators and Congressman James Langevin were in Warwick a week earlier to announce a $1 million federal grant for the fire department, CCAP Executive Director Joanne McGunagle introduced Mayor Scott Avedisian as the “million-dollar man.”

After the laughs, Avedisian spoke of efforts early in this administration to bring non-profits together so that once people needing service from one agency gained access to other agencies and their services. Part of that vision was also for “one stop” to access services. He said McGunagle shared in that vision, and it was CCAP that opened the Wilcox clinic alongside services provided by Westbay Community Action from offices in Buttonwoods.

Avedisian said he isn’t surprised by the grant won by CCAP. He said the reason CCAP is competitive in the grant application process “is because they really think of what needs to be done.”

Reed called Primary Care Partners a “great coming together of CCAP and the Kent Center.”

“It seems every week we’re here to celebrate something good about Warwick,” he said.

He had no arguments. Whitehouse observed Warwick has had back-to-back million dollar weeks, adding, “I don’t know what you have planned for next week.”

Lauterbach was happy enough to have this week. He said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Primary Care Partners exceed the 4,000 patients he had hoped for when the Kent Center started the facility.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here