Sunrise-Monfort Family Clinic dawns in Evans

EVANS – In the newly remodeled and revitalized former headquarters of State Farm Insurance Co. in Evans, moms and kids with little or no health insurance wait to see a doctor in brightly lit, comfortable surroundings.

Receptionists fluent in English and Spanish greet patients at three color-coded treatment pods, where medical care will flow through an easy-to-understand passageway of financial-information intake, exam rooms, accounting and pharmacy if needed.

Mitzi Moran, president and CEO of Sunrise Community Health Center, beams as she leads a tour of the Sunrise-Monfort Family Clinic, a 60,000-square-foot facility that has replaced the very overcrowded Sunrise clinic at 1028 Fifth Ave. near downtown Greeley.

“Lots of people have done lots of things to make this happen,” Moran said. “When this building’s finished, we’ll be able to serve 300 patients a day.”

So far, only 40,000 square feet of the Sunrise-Monfort clinic is being used, with another 20,000 in reserve for expansion. Funded with $6 million from a partnership that included $2 million each from Banner Health, NCMC Inc. and the Monfort Family Foundation, the clinic will ultimately have 41 exam rooms and 18 clinicians, providing a full complement of family health services.

Moran said the clinic’s main clientele is the uninsured and underinsured. “Sixty to 70 percent of our patients don’t have any health insurance, public or private,” she said.

On the other hand, Moran noted, most patients are from families with at least one breadwinner. “We serve the working poor,” she explained. “A lot of people have the perception that we only serve the indigent. Most, by far, are working, and patients do contribute to their care.”

Payment for care is on a sliding scale depending on income, and Moran said the clinic works with patients any way it can, including setting up payment plans.

A ‘wired’ clinic

Exam rooms in the clinic are state-of-the-art, with in-room computers connected to a centralized electronic records system to make it easier for caregivers to access health data and provide treatment quickly.

The clinic also features an onsite laboratory, X-ray room, prenatal care room and private breastfeeding room. Minor outpatient procedures such as sutures and vasectomies can also be performed on site.

The expansion was carried out under the direction of the North Colorado Health Alliance, a coalition of area medical-care providers and agencies that serve the uninsured and underinsured population.  

Mark Wallace, director of the Weld County Health Department and chair of the NCHA’s board of directors, said the expansion of the old Sunrise clinic was long overdue.

“We had maxed out that old (building),” he said. “We couldn’t squeeze in another provider anywhere.” He added that the new facility “should help us make a real dent in what’s out there as far as the un- and under-insured.”

Wallace, one of NCHA’s founders in 2001, said the idea to get agencies to work together to solve common issues grew out of a frustration with the health-care system as it then existed.

“We said we’ve got to do things differently, and we can’t wait for a national solution to do this,” he said. “First and foremost, it meant we are going to plan together to use our resources best. It lets you set better benchmarks as to where you’re going.”

Wallace said the first major project tackled by NCHA was to outfit a mobile health van to go to pockets of need in the county and to visit local schools with high numbers of kids without health-care coverage. The next big project was to expand Sunrise clinic, he said.

“One of the highest priorities we had was to expand Sunrise because it would benefit the hospital, the patients, the health center – everybody.”

Access for all

Gene Haffner, spokesman for North Colorado Medical Center – which, along with McKee Medical Center in Loveland, is owned and operated by Phoenix-based Banner Health – said Banner chipped in its $2 million for the clinic not to decrease the number of patients showing up at its hospitals’ emergency rooms for routine care but to increase health-care access for all.

“The Sunrise clinic as it previously existed was at capacity and had to turn people away for appointments,” he said. “Our intention was increasing access to primary care to all people in the county, and one of the results of that would be potentially lessening the number of visits to the emergency room. The goal is to get people to the most appropriate health care in the most appropriate setting at the most appropriate cost.”

Haffner noted that the NCHA model is being looked at as a possible model for improving health-care coverage.

“This whole thing has caught national attention in terms of the number of players who have been brought to the table,” he said.

Kay Drake, a member of the NCMC Inc. board of directors, said her organization got involved in the Sunrise project because “we were looking at improving the safety net for health care in our community. As a board, we are stewards of that hospital, and if we have a group of people out there not getting the care they need, we wanted to do something about it.”

Drake said the board serves as the owner and landlord of the facility but will let Sunrise manage the clinic according to federal regulations. Drake said she’s excited to have the clinic up and running.

“It is so centered on the patient walking in there,” she said. “And it’s fantastic to get so many people working together, with everybody understanding the need and giving what they can to it.”

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