About Us

The Patient-Centered Health Network is a nonprofit corporation formed in 2004 to address health care needs in rural southwest St. Johns County. The Patient-Centered Health Network currently supervises operations at Hastings Medical Center (HMC), the sole provider of primary care in Hastings, Florida (Congressional District 7). The Patient-Centered Health Network's Board of Directors is fully compliant with BPHC guidelines and includes health and social services professionals and users from the target area.

The community to be served centers on the town of Hastings and comprises two zip codes (32145 and 32033) with a population of 6,048. Because this facility is inadequate to the needs of its community, Patient-Centered Health Network intends to expand services in scope and quantity to this impoverished community through partnerships and contractual arrangements with health care professionals, hospitals, and other providers. This agricultural community scores 15 as a Health Professional Shortage Area and 59.6 as a Medically Underserved Area/ Population. According to 2000 Census data, 40.1% of this population is below 200% of Federal poverty levels, 28.4% are minority, 39.1% are unemployed, 5.6% have inadequate English language ability. Most residents are migrant or seasonal farmworkers, indigents, or the working poor.

The health status of this population is worse than other parts of St. Johns County. The population exhibits higher prevalence and incidence of diabetes, kidney disease, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, high rates of stroke, cancer, and respiratory disease. In addition, higher rates exist for teen pregnancy, infant mortality, low birth weight, and poor use of prenatal care compared with the rest of the county and the state of Florida.

Medical staff at HMC currently consists of one and a-half full-time physicians and three support personnel. Upon becoming a New Access Point/Community Health Center, the Patient-Centered Health Network will add a full-time executive director, a part-time chief medical officer, a full-time chief operating/financial officer, and an information specialist contractor. The Patient-Centered Health Network intends to recruit other staff when a new facility is built, specifically a part-time OB/GYN, a family doctor, case manager(s), a nurse practitioner, and a part-time dentist. The Patient-Centered Health Network will subcontract with Health Choice Network for administrative services. In addition, the Patient-Centered Health Network participates in a collaborative of other health care providers and specialists for consultation, screening, and testing, such as the St. Johns County Health Department as well as Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine, Florida, and St. Vincent's Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida.

The current HMC site is not easy to access. Many residents live in isolated developments that are miles from Hastings. The only public transportation is St. Johns County Council on Aging's small fleet of vans on limited schedules from St. Augustine. To address this access barrier, the proposed HMC site will be on the major east-west highway through Hastings. Transportation services will be augmented. We envision the facility to be open more than 60 hours a week and 365 days a year. The Patient-Centered Health Network intends to provide comprehensive, community-based health care through an integrated approach to service delivery. Services will include primary, acute, and preventive care as well as home care, dental and mental health services, substance abuse treatment and prevention, obstetrics and pediatrics, plus health education and counseling. In addition, limited laboratory, X-ray, and pharmaceutical services will be onsite. Once at full-operational capacity (Year 3), the Patient-Centered Health Network expects to serve 5,000 patients with 16,000 primary care encounters, 2,000 dental, and 2,000 behavioral health and substance abuse encounters.

The Patient-Centered Health Network will also participate in Florida's State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and a new Basic Pharmaceutical Sciences (BPS) system for CHCs as well as wraparound on Medicaid managed-care reimbursement. The Patient-Centered Health Network is ready to exceed expectations by capitalizing on the presence of the already operational HMC and the strategic resources forthcoming from the Patient-Centered Health Network collaborative of academic, medical, faith-based, governmental, and nonprofit entities, such as the Flagler Hospital, the local nonprofit hospital. Patient-Centered Health Network's guiding vision is to actualize patient safety, effectiveness, efficiency, patient centeredness, timeliness, and equity, the six foundational health care principles posited by the Institute of Medicine in its seminal publication, "Crossing the Quality Chasm."