APSB considering school-based health clinic proposals

    A school-based rural health clinic, proposed several months ago, is being asked to come before the Avoyelles School Board to present its case one more time. The board is also considering a separate proposal by Bunkie General Hospital to provide nursing services to the Bunkie schools from its clinic adjacent to Bunkie New Tech High.

    The School Board Finance Committee discussed the need for nurses in the schools at its Jan. 19 meeting. 

   BGH Administrator Linda Deville told the committee that if it approves using the Bunkie clinic to provide nursing services, the clinic would bill Medicaid for treating any Medicaid-eligible students.

    Superintendent Blaine Dauzat told board members this would cost the school district about $4,000 that it currently receives by having a school district nurse provide those services. However, he added, it would improve the level of medical service for the students in Bunkie.

    The Bunkie General proposal would only address a need at Bunkie New Tech because other schools are not within walking distance. 

  After discussing the pros and cons of the Bunkie General proposal, Dauzat said the proposal by Ginger Hunt, CEO of Primary Care Providers for a Healthy Feliciana in East Feliciana Parish, had promised to improve  services to the students and save the board money by absorbing the cost of at least one full-time nurse and possibly half of the salary of another nurse.

   A few board members questioned whether Hunt could actually deliver on her promises.

  The committee then adopted a motion to invite Hunt to this Tuesday’s board meeting to present her proposal again. The board may take action on the issue at that meeting.

   Several board members also said they would go to the Bunkie clinic to look at that proposal in more detail.

  Hunt has established nine Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) in the state to benefit under-served rural areas.  Those centers provide behavioral health services to 54 schools in five parishes.

  She is a family nurse practitioner, an instructor and curriculum-designer for the Baton Rouge School of Nursing and was director of Education & Research at East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson.

 

   “We have received a grant from Rapides Foundation for $300,000 a year for three years, based on the Avoyelles School Board approving our proposal for a school-based program,” Hunt told this newspaper. 

    She said she will be at the meeting Tuesday and hopes the School Board approves the proposal.

   “We will provide, to start with, two RNs to provide nursing services in the schools,” she said. That would increase to paying salaries and benefits for 4.5 nurses in the second year, and possibly more, she added.

   Hunt has also applied for “look alike status” for the clinic, which would allow it to assume the federal benefits that Primary Care Providers enjoys in its East Feliciana clinics. 

   The major advantage is the ability to bill Medicaid at a higher rate than a private health clinic. That higher rate is granted to encourage clinics to operate in under-served areas.

    She said the enhanced rate would allow the clinic to be self-sustaining in its fourth year, after the grant has expired.

    Hunt said the company would also seek federal grants where possible.

  As envisioned, the clinic would probably open in a modular building on a school campus, to be selected by the board. Primary Care Providers would pay for the building. The School Board would pay water and electricity bills for the building, but have no other financial cost for the program.

  Her pre-proposal study found Cottonport Elementary to be the best site for the first such clinic, with Riverside Elementary and Plaucheville Elementary being the two “feeder schools” receiving visits from the clinic nurses.

   She said the proposal can be adjusted to fit the district’s needs.

 

   “Our proposal not only costs the school district nothing, but it will improve services to the children in the school district,” she said.

  The clinic would provide school nursing services, dental health and behavioral (mental) health services in the host school and two other “feeder” schools, Hunt said. It will provide primary care -- or “sick care” -- services only at the clinic location. She said it would be open to students who were brought to the clinic by their parents.

  The program is intended to grow to include all 10 schools receiving services from a clinic in one or more schools, she said. That could be achieved within five years and possibly sooner since there are only 10 schools in Avoyelles involved.

  Her company started with one clinic in East Feliciana Schools and now has a full clinic at each of that parish’s four schools, she said.

  “Livingston Parish asked us to come in to take over their behavioral health services,” Hunt said. “They have 44 schools. We went into two schools and we now serve 34 of those schools in less than a five-year period.”

  Hunt said her company is only about expanding medical services into areas that are under-served in medical, behavioral and dental health providers.

  “We are not trying to take over services that are already being provided,” she said. “We are not trying to take patients from somebody else. We want to reach those under-served areas and provide services to those who are not able to access health services.”