Sonoma Gives: A belief that everyone deserves care

It’s no surprise that Dr. Nurit Licht, the energetic chief medical officer of Petaluma Health Center, is an early riser. Most mornings she’s up at 5:30, answering emails and finalizing plans for the day ahead.

“And then it’s family time,” she says. “I have two school age kids, so after I get them ready for their own day we always sit down to a nice family breakfast.”

Once at the modern 53,000-square-foot center, Licht plunges into a nonstop round of seeing patients in the clinic, managing administrative matters, taking calls for birth, pediatric and newborn issues, or meeting with staff members to discuss ongoing projects.

Licht, who graduated from Dartmouth Medical School and has been at the center for nine years, oversees the establishment’s health providers in three departments: family medicine, women’s services and mental health.

Her philosophy about health care has a simple bottom line. “The patient’s needs should be the centerpiece,” she says. “If you put the patient first, everything comes together easily, and everybody benefits. The staff and providers are collaborative, caring and unbelievably compassionate, and that fact seeps through to patient relationships. Everybody involved gets great results.”

“Dr. Licht is a remarkable person,” said Pedro Toledo, chief administrative officer. “She believes deeply that every single person in our community should have access to the care they need to be healthy, whether or not they can afford to pay. She embodies that belief in her work every day.”

Petaluma Health Center is a private, nonprofit corporation and a federally qualified health center committed to providing high-quality primary care to residents of southern Sonoma County, regardless of their ability to pay. The center provides comprehensive primary medical care, integrated behavioral health, health education, community fitness classes and wellness programs.

Revenue is derived largely from two sources: patient/third party fees and grants/donations. And last year, the center was awarded nearly $100,000 in federal grants for its leadership in meeting local and national health care quality standards.

Sources of patient fees include Medicare, Medi-Cal, other public insurance, private insurance and self pay/uninsured. The Affordable Health Care Act, combined with a vigorous enrollment program at the center, resulted in significant changes to the latter two categories between 2013 and 2014. The fee percentage derived from private insurance jumped from 12.44 to 30 percent; self pay/uninsured fee sources declined from 48.5 to ?20 percent.

“Some of our patients are indigent or noncitizens,” Licht said. “We receive some government funding to help people who have no funds; we have a sliding scale program that takes income into account; and we utilize other programs. Our only goal as a nonprofit is to break even. Any supplement we get goes into providing care for all.”

And Petaluma Health Center continues to increase care for all, recently opening school-based clinics at Petaluma’s Casa Grande and San Antonio high schools, as well as at Santa Rosa Junior College.

“We’re doubling in size in 2015,” Toledo said, “opening a 35,000-square-foot facility in Rohnert Park. We’re currently doing 120,000 patient visits per year, but we’ll jump to 200,000 12 months after we open. Rohnert Park currently has no private doctors. It’s the only city in the county without a primary clinic, but not for long.”

“It’s a bit stressful,” Licht said. “We’re busy recruiting, looking for more health care providers, and we’re continuing to innovate around how we can meet the needs of our patients - technology in telemedicine, empowering nurses to be more active team members in outpatient services. We now have patient navigators to help patients make their way through the complicated health care systems.

“We have a deep culture of quality improvement. It’s something that takes years to foster, and we’ve built many systems around it. We meet monthly across departments to see what’s working and what’s not. It’s paying off. We’ve got every single team member and staff member on board, and we’re all looking to make the center better and better. That is so rewarding.”

Petaluma Health Center is located at 1179 N. McDowell Blvd., 559-7500, phealthcenter.org.