The Major Mistakes Community Health Centers Make – Mistakes 4, 5, and 6.

The Major Mistakes Community Health Centers Make – Mistakes 4, 5, and 6.

Continuing with this Series, yesterday we wrote about the first three mistakes:
1. Failing to Define the Mission and Purpose of the Community Health Center
(CHC)
2. Giving the Community Health Center Tasks That Are Not Consistent With Its
Mission
3. Running a Community Health Center Using Weak Providers

The potential for the success of a Community Health Center is great; however, the track records of many CHC’s are littered with mistakes, failures, and attempts to repeat the same historic actions while expecting different results. This series is designed to help your Community Health Center avoid repeating prior CHC failures:

a. Failure to serve the medically underserved in its area;
b. Failure to its employees in not having competent senior management;
c. Failure to use its resources effectively.

Mistake # 4. community health centers not hiring an operationally strong Executive Director:
Community Health Center Boards are often eager to hire “heavyweights” to run their operation. However, that heavyweight may not have sufficient top-level management experience, and little understanding of the operating basics that are critical in a CHC. Community Health Center Executive Directors must demonstrate that they can run the CHC more effectively than the physicians or the office managers.

Mistake # 5. Expecting the community health center to handle work without getting paid:
If the CHC Boards and Senior Management require work to be done, they must ensure that their CHC is paid the fair-market-value for that work. If the CHC is asked to perform a task free of charge, or even at a reduced rate, it will lose money. This loss of money will impact its ability to continuing serving the underserved.

Mistake # 6. Choosing an inappropriate computer system and software:
Vendors will tell you that their system is perfect for your needs, and that their system can do anything. Because of the lack of experience or knowledge in selecting a system for a CHC, Senior Management may find itself with a system that cannot track accounts receivables, managed care patients, file claims electronically, handle authorizations, or facilitate accurate and timely patient and operational data.

Some CHCs take shortcuts because of tight budgets. They may continue using their old, outdated, sometimes cheap systems. As a result, there is no appreciable impact on the operation of the community health center and its patients. Patients suffer, when CHCs use computer systems and programs that were new when color television was a novelty.

Next Post: A Profile of Community Health Centers Errors