WESTSIDE FAMILY HEALTH CENTER
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Mission Statement
Westside Family Health Center provides comprehensive, high quality, cost-effective health care in an educational and supportive environment that empowers patients to take an assertive role in caring for their well-being through all stages of life.
About This Cause
Founded as a women’s health center in 1974 and now a Federally Qualified Health Center, Westside Family Health Center (WFHC) provides quality primary care services to 11,976 patients a year Ninety-six percent of WFHC’s patients live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level and 44% have no health insurance. Seventy-three percent of patients are female and 20% of patients are best served in a language other than English. WFHC provides access to health care for all its patients regardless of their ability to pay. We are a trusted community partner that imparts essential health care, health information and health education in a culturally competent and linguistically appropriate manner. WFHC fulfilled a longtime dream with the opening of its state-of-the-art clinic and headquarters, located at 3861 Sepulveda Boulevard in Culver City, in April 2020. The site features: 12,000 square feet of clinic space, 32 exam rooms, 12,000 square feet of administrative space, and 89 parking spaces, and finally matches WFHC’s deep commitment to the holistic patient experience and social justice through health equity. Current services include family practice, prenatal, pediatrics, women’s health, mental health, oral health, and COVID-19 care including testing and vaccinations. Vision care will be launching in 2024. WFHC’s focus also includes Social Determinants of Health (SDOH). All patients complete the PRAPARE screener, which is designed to identify SDOH issues that patients are facing. WFHC can then connect these patients to additional resources through one of the more than 50 community partners that WFHC collaborates with. Since the pandemic began, WFHC has been very focused on food insecurity. WFHC collaborated with Venice Family Clinic through a grant from UCLA to distribute more than 50,000 free prepared meals to members of the community experiencing food insecurity. When patients were not able to access these meals themselves, members of WFHC’s Community Outreach and Education team delivered the meals to the patients. The grant concluded in August 2021. WFHC has long known that the community it serves not only deals with high rates of chronic diseases, but also struggles with SDOH such as domestic abuse, violence, environmental contaminants, access to transportation, food and housing insecurity, access to fresh produce, access to green spaces, among many others. These issues can cause or compound many of the health issues WFHC sees, and consequently, the community that WFHC serves experiences chronic diseases at a much higher rate than the general population. WFHC also knows from its 2021 Community Health Needs Assessment, and from patient experience surveys that the community wants additional services such as vision, dental and mental health. By addressing SDOH, WFHC is working to reverse SDOH-related issues and level the playing field including health equity. WFHC’s patients are drawn largely from Los Angeles’ Westside where nearly 560,000 residents are low-income and just over 148,000 are uninsured. WFHC is located in Service Planning Area (SPA) 5, which is in western Los Angeles County and bordered by Imperial Highway, La Cienega Boulevard, Mulholland Drive and the Pacific Ocean. SPA 5 has only 28 zip codes, yet the 2021 federal Uniform Data System (UDS) report indicates that WFHC patients come from 190 zip codes. Forty-nine percent of WFHC patients identify their ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino. Racially, 50% identify as White, 11% as Black/African American, 4% as Asian or Pacific Islander, 1% as More Than One Race, and 34% were unreported or refused to report race. WFHC’s relocation happened just as the COVID-19 pandemic began to surge. The pandemic presented many new challenges to WFHC and forced its team to quickly adapt so that patients could continue to access care. In a 24-hour period, WFHC configured and launched a telehealth program to serve patients who could not come for on-site visits. The telehealth program initially consisted of telephonic visits and expanded to include televirtual visits. At the height of the pandemic, 88% of patient visits were telehealth. In order to improve the quality of its telehealth care, WFHC purchased Remote Monitoring Devices (RMDs) for high-risk patients for at-home use. RMDs are distributed either to patients who are already receiving treatment for chronic diseases such as diabetes or hypertension or to patients who are at-risk. RMDs include pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs, scales, thermometers, and glucometers and allow for more accurate collection of key patient data. WFHC’s patient portal enrollment efforts over the past several years paid off during the pandemic as nearly 8,000 patients are currently enrolled and are using the portal to review their lab results, communicate with their medical providers, and request appointments and medication refills. WFHC continues to offer the community COVID-19 testing and vaccinations through its clinical team while its Community Outreach and Education team vigorously promotes WFHC’s services to the public as well as COVID-19-related health education including social distancing, mask wearing and updates on Omicron variants. Additional hires have allowed WFHC to scale up to 200 COVID-19 doses administered per week, or roughly 10,000 doses per year. WFHC’s Culver City site relies on an innovative care model where each exam room has a Community Health Worker (CHW) assigned to the room to support the providers and act as a patient liaison. The CHW is responsible for escorting the patient to the exam room, taking all intake information and facilitating the patient visit. This model reduces time spent in the waiting room and creates more of a boutique experience where patients are closely cared for, and any questions can be answered in the language that the patient is best served in. WFHC recognizes that CHWs are not only essential to WFHC’s future but to the health care system in general. WFHC has partnered with Providence St. John’s CHW Academy to host two CHW interns for a nine-month period after which WFHC may hire them. In 2021, WFHC worked with Melissa Schoen of Schoen Consulting to create a new strategic plan for the next three years that will guide how WFHC strategically grows and optimizes its performance. WFHC received a new interim pay-per-service (PPS) rate—a process that will take several years to finalize, but which is a crucial piece of WFHC’s long term plan for financial sustainability. Not only does WFHC project that it will double the number of patients it sees over the next five years and triple the number of visits, but a higher PPS rate will result in increased revenue for each patient visit. WFHC has traditionally raised at least 20% of its annual budget from fundraising to close the gap between reimbursement for fees for services and the full cost of operations. Private fundraising from foundations, corporations and individuals continues to be critical as projected patient visit revenues remain unpredictable given the ups and downs of COVID-19. Following the strategic plan, which is a living, breathing document—and is reviewed at least quarterly by WFHC’s Board of Directors and Senior Management Team—will serve WFHC well during this next phase of growth. Thank you for your consideration. For more information, please contact Director of Development Cindi Berns at cberns@wfhcenter.org. Thank you.