PAWTUCKET – Last year, Blackstone Valley Community Health Care served more than 11,500 patients – an increase of more than 16 percent since the recession began in 2008, according to Raymond Lavoie, the community health center’s executive director. “That’s more than a full-house at McCoy Stadium,” he said, as he introduced the dignitaries assembled to celebrate the groundbreaking of a new facility on East Avenue.
With the new $6.7 million facility, Lavoie continued, scheduled to be completed in September 2012, Blackstone Valley Community Health Care will be able to serve more than 16,000 patients, a direct result of the 32 additional exam rooms, nearly doubling the center’s current capacity. In addition, the new facility will be a job creator: three new clinicians and seven support staff will be hired, as well as 23 construction workers, Lavoie told the crowd of more than 100 people. “Together, we’ll be changing lives by offering residents the gift of good health.”
Sen. Jack Reed, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. David N. Cicilline, Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts, Jane Hayward, president and CEO of the R.I. Health Center Association and Women’s Care CEO Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, all spoke.
Reed praised the health center’s staff, saying: “It’s a day to celebrate what the staff does each and every day.” Part of the funding for the new health facility, Reed explained, had come about as a result of the national stimulus legislation enacted in 2009.
Whitehouse called the new facility a “win, win, win, win,” because Blackstone Valley’s system of delivering health care as a community-based, patient-centered medical home, with full integration of electronic health records, was “a new model of caring – better than even what the wealthy now receive.”
This model of care, Whitehouse continued, was the solution to “the domestic battle of our generation. What people are saying about the [burden of the ever-increasing] costs of Medicare and Medicaid gets solved with this model. Your delegation has your back,as you continue to grow this model.”
Some 125,000 Rhode Islanders currently receive health care at community health care centers, according to Roberts. She praised the creativity of the Blackstone Valley’s staff, saying: “Any organization that is smart enough to turn its program into a fan in July deserves applause.”
