CHERRY STREET SERVICES FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
To cultivate community awareness, trust and financial investment to ensure comprehensive, primary and behavioral health care is accessible for all, no matter income or insurance status.
About This Cause
Health care is an essential service regardless of where people live or why they live there. It is extremely important for everyone in a community to have excellent neighborhood health care. It’s equally important for providers to make the best possible use of limited dollars. That’s why Cherry Health exists. Our strategy is very simple. We seek out communities or niches where there is a ‘perfect storm’ in health care. A perfect storm is defined as “a critical state of affairs arising from a number of negative factors.” So, in health care terms, we look for places where there are unmet health needs, combined with barriers, referred to as “social determinants of health,” that make it difficult for people to meet those needs. Then we design a set of services based on that particular community. We can identify and solve unmet health care needs because we are an independent nonprofit organization serving over 70,000 patients in 7 Michigan counties. Some of the ways we have responded to various ‘perfect storms’ include: • Heart of the City Health Center. Located in the Heartside neighborhood of downtown Grand Rapids, this comprehensive center offers medical, dental, vision and mental health services. Its unique features include multi-lingual providers, trauma-informed care, on-site affordable pharmacy and a location right on a major bus line. Your ability to access quality health care should not depend on your zip code. • School health centers. These centers are the single most accessible and affordable source of care for children. We have placed health centers in schools where most of the students do not have a primary care provider, a dentist, or access to behavioral health professionals. The most practical benefit is that students can simply walk down the hall to receive care. This is especially important in areas where it is difficult for working parents to take time off from work, or to provide transportation to one or more facilities. Cherry Health runs several centers for students and families at school locations throughout greater Grand Rapids. • Addiction Recovery — Medication Assisted Treatment Centers. Tune in to almost any news and you will hear about the opioid addiction crisis. Our treatment centers use medication in treatment that is proven, up to 75% more effective, to save lives. We back that up with personalized counseling. This allows people with addictions to start recovery and maintain long term healing. Muskegon has the highest rate of opioid hospitalization in the state. Many people in Muskegon do not have the resources to pay for private addiction recovery, or the ability to travel to Grand Rapids (our next closest place to receive this kind of treatment). We are doing more than providing “better than nothing” care - we are providing excellent care for everyone who walks through our doors. Our patients agree that they are receiving quality services. In 2018, we had a 95 percent patient satisfaction rate and we were named as one of the top health centers in America, given the Health Center Quality Leader Award by the Health Resources and Human Services Administration (HRSA). Studies have shown that community health centers save $24 billion for the national health system each year. That’s because preventative care is far less expensive than emergency care. Unfortunately, the care that achieves the best outcomes is not always reimbursed. For example, many of our patients need to schedule multiple appointments in one day, to minimize transportation requirements or time off from work. However, insurance will only reimburse us for one medically-related visit on the same day. So, if a patient sees both a physician and a dietician on the same day, one of those visits is unreimbursed. Additional services that are important to our patients, such as care team “huddle time,” the case management of a community health worker or phone calls with patients, are also not covered expenses. We run as lean as we can, without sacrificing quality. However, there are significant gaps between costs and revenue. Insurance payers such as Medicaid do not reimburse us at a rate anywhere near the actual cost of providing care. Neither do the uninsured patients who pay out of their pockets. This means we are running an operating deficit while providing excellent care. That certainly doesn't allow us to build up reserve funds for capital improvements. We also cannot skim off revenue to start up new programs, even those that can be self-funding after their initial launch. That’s why Cherry Health Foundation exists. Cherry Health Foundation engages private donors in the mission of filling those ‘perfect storm’ needs. Through their generosity, we are able to: • Fill the gap between actual costs and reimbursements. • Finance the startup of new programs that are designed to improve patient and community health. • Raise capital funds to make essential investments in our facilities and systems. We all need good health in order to go to school, earn a living and function in our daily lives. But far too many children and adults find themselves tossed on the waves of poor health. Poverty, language, transportation and other factors drag them under, steadily pulling them away from resources that could help. Cherry Health is different. We design solutions that specifically address barriers to care, and create safe havens for health needs. We do this because we believe that all of our patients deserve the best care and the utmost respect. Through Cherry Health Foundation, our community can rally behind that belief, providing essential financial support for solutions that work.