“The emphasis for the name change was to better reflect the services that we provide to the community,” said Mark Bellisario, CEO of Primary Health Solutions. “Under our old name (BCCHC), people really had no concept of what we did. There really wasn’t a good idea of who we are.”
Primary Health Solutions serves thousands of uninsured or underinsured Butler County residents each year who would otherwise go without medical or dental treatment, Bellisario said. Last year, the nonprofit registered 10,900 patients at its two centers in Middletown and Hamilton, according to the agency.
A growing demand for pediatric care providers that accept Medicaid for children is what drove Primary Health Solutions to open a second health center in Hamilton. The new Hamilton West center at 903 NW Washington Blvd. will attempt to fill a void created when local pediatricians Drs. Mark and Scott Blankenburg closed their practices after being sentenced to prison.
“They (the Blankenburgs) had a high percentage of Medicaid patients,” Bellisario said. “So what we found was people looking for access to care for pediatricians who would accept Medicaid, and we wanted to meet that need.”
Need for pediatric care grows
The new, 5,300-square-foot building on NW Washington Boulevard joins the Bevers Center on South Second Street in Hamilton and the Middletown health center on 9th Avenue in Middletown as part of the agency’s health care network.
The new facility, funded through federal stimulus dollars, is designed to help meet the need for more pediatric care providers that accept Medicaid, said Mark Bellisario, CEO of Primary Health Solutions.
“When we sat down and looked at the needs of the community and the patient population that we had, it was evident that we needed to add pediatric services to the mix of providers that we had,” Bellisario said. “In the Hamilton office (Bevers Center), about 50 percent of our patients are pediatric patients.”
The need for pediatric services in Butler County, particularly in the Hamilton area, was exacerbated when Drs. Mark and Scott Blankenburg closed their practices after being sent to jail on a number of criminal charges, Bellisario said.
“They had a high percentage of Medicaid patients,” he said.
So about a year ago, the health consortium began looking at ways to expand.
It was during this time that the consortium received a $560,000 federal stimulus grant.
This was used to furnish the new Hamilton West office at 903 NW Washington Blvd., as well as provide new medical, lab and diagnostic equipment.
The agency received additional stimulus dollars to pay for a pediatrician and a part-time nurse practitioner at the new health center, Bellisario said.
The new office will have 15 exam rooms and will be the first of its health centers to feature electronic medical records.
Starting Monday, the new health center will be seeing patients on a “very limited basis” for the first two weeks, Bellisario said, to give physicians time to acquaint themselves with the new electronic system.
An open house for the public will be held on April 29, he said.
All of Primary Health Solutions offices are open to everyone, officials stressed, whether you have insurance or not.
Bellisario said the agency receives a grant from the federal government to help cover the costs of uninsured patients. And for those who are uninsured or underinsured, officials said, they also cover patient costs on a sliding scale, meaning a person’s co-pay, or how much they would be charged, would be determined by the number of people in his household and his income.
Officials stressed that patients must, however, schedule an appointment to see a physician and that they can’t just walk in off the street.
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