Plans for new PHC facility progress

<p>The Petaluma Health Center’s efforts to move into a much larger facility on North McDowell Boulevard received a big boost on July 8, when the Petaluma Health Care District board voted 4-0 to provide it with a $1 million loan, albeit with a significant contingency.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>The PHC will receive the loan if it obtains the other $10 million needed to purchase and renovate a 53,000-square-foot building at 1179 N. McDowell Blvd. This consists of $6 million that the health center will apply for in federal stimulus funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as $4 million in bond financing. </p><p>Kathie Powell, executive director of the health center as well as a member of the PHCD board, says it has a strong chance to receive the stimulus money.</p><p>“We will be competing for the funding, but have been told that projects such as ours that are ‘shovel ready’ (ready to begin right away), are being given priority. Also, the need for primary-care services is very significant in Petaluma, and we’re hoping this is taken into account,” she said.</p><p>The health center will apply for the funding in August, and expects to learn if it received it on Nov. 1, Powell added.</p><p>She says that Capital Link, an investment company that has been assisting the health center with its financial and business plan, has been helping to find a purchaser of the bonds, and is optimistic that a deal will be reached.</p><p>“But no one has given us a commitment yet,” Powell said.</p><p>The PHC plans to soon launch a capital campaign to help pay back the loan and bond money.</p><p>“The capital campaign still is in developmental stages. We hope to raise $5 million to pay off all the money,” Powell said.</p><p>Meanwhile, the health center is negotiating a purchase agreement to buy the building at 1179 N. McDowell Blvd.</p><p>“We hope to have it signed by the end of the month, and for the sale to close on about Nov. 15,” Powell said.</p><p>She hopes that renovations will begin around Jan. 1 and that the building will open in October. The facility will enable the PHC to vastly expand its services, currently crammed into a 15,000-square-foot building at 1301 Southpoint Blvd.</p><p>The space would allow PHC to increase its annual patient load from the current 68,500 — and rapidly growing — to 108,000 in 2013, as well as provide enough growth room through 2020, Powell said.</p><p>“We’ve never had this opportunity before, and are using all our energy to make this happen,” she said.</p><p>The PHC plans to lease 5,000 feet of the building to Redwood Community Health Coalition, and might lease additional space.</p><p>“It will depend upon whether we will provide some services ourselves or ‘contract out’ for them,” Powell said. </p><p>At the July 8 meeting, PHCD board members questioned whether the federal government might, at some point, significantly reduce reimbursement funds to community health centers, and thereby hinder the PHC’s ability to pay back the loan. It is to be paid back over a 17-year period, at an interest rate of 2.5 percent plus the prime rate (currently 3.25 percent) over the first two years and then at no less than 2.5 percent plus the prime rate, or at the market rate, during the remaining 15 years.</p><p>“There’s nothing to indicate at this time that the funding will be reduced. The governments of presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush both have provided significant funding for community health centers,” said Daymon Doss, executive director of the PHCD.</p><p> He emphasized the importance of the health center to the Petaluma community.</p><p>“The health center is a vital part of local health-care, serving the insured, uninsured and underinsured. It has been serving people for more than a decade, and now is the largest non-Kaiser medical provider in south Sonoma County,” he said.</p><p>(Contact Dan Johnson at dan.johnson@arguscourier.com)</p>