| Possumus Fall 2008 |
Partnerships |
Partnerships
WORKING ON A HEALTHIER COMMUNITY.
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What the Doctor Ordered
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But not all St. Mary’s Clinics patients receive care at clinics the Sisters manage. That breakfast meeting between Sister Mary Madonna and Mick Johnson soon resulted in a new business model for SMHC, one that exists today alongside the 11 volunteer-staffed clinics. At SMHC, it’s known as the Park Nicollet model. Like all the Sisters’ partnerships, it works to the benefit of both parties involved.
Mick Johnson remembers how it began. Park Nicollet had been staffing one of St. Mary’s volunteer clinics as part of their community connectivity mission. Eventually, one of the physicians who had been helping out at the clinic came to talk to Mick. “We’d rather not see a poor patient or a rich patient. We’d actually just like to see a patient,” the doctor explained. Then he asked why he couldn’t simply see St. Mary’s patients at his own clinic, mixed in with his regular paying patients. |
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“At the same time,” Barbara Dickie tells us, “SMHC was looking for new geography, a way to bring our clinics to areas of town where new populations in need were growing.” Putting St. Mary’s patients into existing Park Nicollet clinics turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. Literally.
Mick explains how the partnership works at Park Nicollet clinic locations: “St. Mary’s triages the patients. They take the call, find the transportation, get reimbursement lined up, and locate a translator if one is needed. We want to serve these populations, but we’re not equipped here to do any of that.” Regardless of which type of clinic a St. Mary’s patient eventually goes to, SMHC has full responsibility for screening them in advance. The admissions staff fields 26,000 calls a year. The staff members talk to the potential patients on the phone. They assess the medical problems and check the callers’ financials to make sure they are indeed uninsured and unable to obtain health care anywhere else. When they are found to be eligible for government programs, the social services staff helps them apply for MNCare or county medical assistance, to defray some of the cost of care.
It cost Park Nicollet $2.3 million to see St. Mary’s patients last year. But because they can expense doesn’t get written off as bad debt. Instead, it goes into Park Nicollet’s books as charitable giving——an important distinction for a nonprofit health care provider to be able to make. Continued...
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