After managing Juneau’s Front Street Community Health Center for more than a year, Alaska Island Community Services will soon completely take over the health center that mainly serves Juneau’s homeless, uninsured and underinsured residents.
“They’ve done a really good job running it efficiently. They’ve increased the revenue sources, they’ve ensured that there’s consistent provision of services,” Front Street Community Health Center board member Mariya Lovishchuk said on the phone Thursday.
Alaska Island Community Services is a federally qualified health clinic based in Wrangell. Executive director Mark Walker started the nonprofit in 1989 and has significantly grown the organization, which now offers differing levels of medical, dental and behavioral health services in Wrangell, Gustavus and Northern Prince of Wales Island. AICS has 130 employees, most of them Wrangell-based.
Front Street Community Health Center is its first venture into Juneau. AICS took over management in May 2015 at the request of the Front Street Community Health Center board.
“I think, in that time, we really brought both financial and programmatic stability to the clinic, so at this point it’s more efficient for Front Street to be part of AICS operations rather than continuing a management contract,” Walker said on Friday. “Then they’ll just be one electronic health record for us to manage, one accounting system, one billing system, one set of operational policies and procedures. It would just make it far more efficient to manage the clinic that way.”
It was the administrative burden that initially plagued the Front Street Community Health Center board of directors when it took over the health center in 2014, Lovishchuk said.
Front Street has gone through several leadership changes in the past few years. Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, which had long run the clinic, planned to shut it down completely in October 2013 due to budgetary constraints. After the Juneau community raised more than $100,000 in one week to keep the clinic’s doors open, SEARCH continued running it through April 2014. After that, a new board made up of individuals from agencies involved in the care of the homeless population took over.
“The Juneau Community Health Center entity was formed to ensure services would continue instead of cease to exist,” said Lovishchuk, who’s also the executive director of Juneau’s shelter and soup kitchen The Glory Hole.
“It became very apparent that after a very rocky first year and a half, it’s really difficult to be such a small organization to provide services due to the administration burden associated with providing healthcare,” she said.
Difficulties included securing funding, retaining providers, offering benefits — “all the things that larger organizations can do,” Lovishchuk said.
She said the Front Street board will likely make the final vote to completely transfer the health center to AICS early next week. At that point, the board will also decide if it needs to stay intact.
“I think the general consensus is the entity has served its purpose. We kept the services going and the services will keep going without us, and so since we fulfilled our mission, the board will probably dissolve,” Lovishchuk said.
As Front Street transitions to be under AICS, Walker said nothing should be changing.
“We’re committed to providing sustainable and quality services to the homeless population in Juneau,” he said.
At the moment, AICS is looking to hire a permanent nurse practitioner for Front Street and anticipates starting dental services back up in the next three months, Walker said. The behavioral health clinician is still working towards implementing a medically-assisted counseling program for opiate and alcohol addictions, and the plan is to still move the clinic into Juneau’s Housing First project once it’s up and running.
“We’re very excited,” Walker said. “We feel very good about our work there in Juneau and we’re continuing to grow the services at Front Street and serve that population.”
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
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The entrance of Front Street Community Health Center, located on the second floor inside Mercantile Mall on Front Street in downtown Juneau, seen Friday.
