It's been a wild ride for the past few years. Anticipating that, as best we could, my colleagues and I on the Packard Community Clinic Board of Directors began seven years ago to address the question of what PCC would be like in the year 2000 and beyond.
We began by identifying the key elements of PCC's success in continuing to provide service for its first 18 years:
Our desire to maintain PCC as a community resource for a long time to come lay behind our decision to embark on a careful assessment of our services, the better to inform both our short-term and long-term strategic plans. In 1991, we commissioned a study that included an evaluation of services and a planning report. This was followed in 1993 by a comprehensive analysis of utilization and patient responses, and a recently completed patient satisfaction survey.
These studies provided a sound informational basis for some major decisions regarding PCC:
In order to survive, we must constantly ask ourselves: How does PCC define itself? How does it define success? And how do we measure that?
The mission statement of Packard Community Clinic is composed of one sentence. Still, as simple as it is, it captures the PCC spirit. We print it on the agenda of every Board of Directors meeting and all of our publications. Here it is:
"The primary mission of the Packard Community Clinic family practice is to bring high quality comprehensive medical care on a very personal level to all patients, and especially those who cannot afford it."
Please note the key elements: "family practice," "high quality," "comprehensive medical care," "personal level to all patients, especially to those who cannot afford it."
Dr. Walden put it succinctly in a recent newsletter: "The sense of community is very important at PCC, and it is a community, in the fullest sense of that care-worn word. When we call this a family practice, we mean it. I never get over my sense of wonder at how deeply people let you into the sanctity of their lives, how painful that can be, and how amazingly gratifying it is."
As an individual consumer, I feel trapped on a merry-go-round that doesn't stop: HMOs, capitation, mergers, THIS IS NOT A BILL, corporate takeovers, the disappearance of familiar drug stores, daily mail appeals to join a new health plan, threatened cutbacks in services, "touch one if you ... ", and on and on and on. We need to develop forums on these issues of health care and explore all of the possibilities in the future.
At PCC, we are doing our level best to remain both independent and totally driven by patient needs. Even so, we now must deal with a dozen insurance carriers, issues of capitation, and the frightening prospect of steep increases in the ranks of the uninsured. We are fighting to preserve our non-profit mission in an increasingly corporate medical environment.
This is the real challenge: Can this family practice weather the storm of the constantly changing world of health services? We think we can. And we need your help to do it.
October 1997