Greater Baden Health Clinic/Nanjemoy

I could hear the silence of our County Commissioners and other elected officials in Annapolis loud and clear; "Where? What clinic? I didn't know they had a clinic? That's too bad. What's next on the agenda?"

First came the cuts to Van-Go in the form of stops, because of funding, which resulted in the inability for most people in the outlying areas to reach the "city" of Waldorf to get to work, doctors (for lab work, dialysis, MRIs, etc), shopping (and not just for "fun", but for food and necessities) and banking, cashing checks, etc.

Then the next series of cuts came to the disabled, again because of budget cuts. Again, people were now cut off from getting to these important places NECESSARY to the day to day life we all take for granted. Not being able to get to work you could now be left without health insurance or the ability to pay for health insurance.

Hence, the ripple effect.

Our commissioners were unable to assist with stepping in and impressing the State with getting neither more funding for Van-Go (transportation) nor were they able to find it within the County budget anywhere to keep this very necessary service going.

Now, the ripple has turned into a wave.

Once again the wave has created a tsunami and it is the most vulnerable who are getting swept away in the crush of double speak from CEOs and politicians.

Instead of spending several hundred thousand on transportation to keep the service going and even stepping it up, which would have helped the people who needed this service the most get to jobs to help pay for their own health insurance or to doctor appointments, now we are going to pay 10 fold for not making that investment. And that does not take into consideration the human element!

Now we have the closing of the Greater Baden/Nanjemoy Health Clinic because of operating losses. Many of these residents will now sit and wait until illnesses become so chronic and/or dire that it could be fatal or close to it or the cost to care for the illness by the time it is treated will now be magnified many times over. All because we chose to be penny wise over bus stops and because a corporation seems to think being in a rural area is not profitable enough.

(When the affordable housing issue (in Nanjemoy) was going on the clinic was discussed and the need of upgrading electricity for the generators was raised; currently a volunteer comes in and runs an extension cord to keep the medicine in the refrigerators "plugged in". The commissioner president and district 2 commissioner both promised they would do something about this right away...) Has anything been done about this since they both promised this or have they known about the possibility of the Health Clinic closing since last summer? If they have not known and since nothing has been done about the electrical situation with the generator, why not?

If the clinic has been operating at a loss, why has it not been brought to the attention of the county long before "closing time", so that a plan could be put together to stave off this devastating news to the residents being served? Has it been brought up before now? Why have we not had any community meetings about this issue? This seems to be an important issue that would warrant a meeting both at the community level and on the Commissioner’s meeting agenda. What happened that this did not get brought up before now, or again, did it but only now is being made public?

Other than being "stunned and feeling bad" about the news, which was delivered in a closed meeting, (the “closed” meeting between the Greater Baden BOD, County Commissioners and CC Chamber of Commerce) does the county have a plan to assist all of the residents who can not get to La Plata or Waldorf or White Plains for medical appointments? Can the White Plains Health Department handle another 9k caseload per year IF those patients were to go to the Health Department or even 4,500 of those cases? What extra cost would that add to budgets, local or State? It is still our money (taxes) one way or another. Again, what about the human factor? A lot of the patients happen to love their care takers at the Greater Baden clinic. What if you were told after years of being with your doctor to just find another one because of no other reason then budget cuts, with all the waste we see in our government?

The providers at the Nanjemoy Health Clinic are some of the best that this area has ever seen. Every person that comes into the clinic is treated with respect and provided with top quality medical service. You would never be able to tell who is paying for service and who is not, who is on a sliding scale and who is not, who is having trouble with their bill and who is not. No one, but no one is ever, ever rushed through an appointment, ever.

Our county government building has requested $9 million for improvements or refurbishments or something in the stimulus package. (Submitted as part of the County’s “shovel ready” projects to the governor prior to the Recovery Act Bill even being signed). I have no idea if this is needed, what they are going to do to the building, etc. But I know this; Greater Baden Clinic and the residents of Charles County and the health of our citizens and the transportation, and employment of rural area folks need that much, much more. This will have direct “stimulative” impact on our economy with lasting effects and if run properly can even create jobs.

Find the money and find it now. Somewhere, somehow. We have it. Make it happen and fix it and stop with all the bloviating about cost and budget. Go through the budget and cut some fat, it is there. If you can not find, call me and I will be there in an hour and find some unnecessary or less necessary cost.

Not taking care of this right now will balloon to much, much more in the long run and again, no one has mentioned the human factor! People are hurting, literally, emotionally, financially and spiritually. This is directly and immediately impacting people’s lives, health, work and finances and emotions at a very “fearful” time in our country, as the President puts it.

Please don’t add to that fear.

Greater Baden's 2007 annual report, the latest available, shows that for that year the non-profit organization had a net profit of roughly $500k, with $5.1 million in expenses and $5.6 million in revenue.

Also, Greater Baden served roughly just over 9k patients that year at all its locations. Of those served, 65% were African American, 19% Hispanic and 16% Caucasian. 94% were below the 200% Federal poverty level. 57% were uninsured or sliding fee eligible; 34% were beneficiaries of Medicare or Medicaid. Greater Baden also provided outreach medical services to 379 homeless and 161 migrants or seasonal workers. This was all done and a profit or a non-loss was still achieved.

To say that Nanjemoy and all the people being served, insured, non-insured, sliding scale and people who just walk-in are grateful is simply an understatement. The Health Center is a highly credited and qualified health care provider and one that is truly appreciated by all patrons, bar none. Charles County as a whole benefits greatly from the services provided by this Health Provider and removing them from Nanjemoy will compound cost within our County’s budget magnificently in other areas that will make $150k seem like a drop in the bucket.

But to now hear that $150,000 for 2008 is the claim for suddenly wanting to fast track out of Nanjemoy is suspect to say the least.

The numbers for Nanjemoy are not down. The Nanjemoy claims are not the reasons. What else is at the core of the BOD's reason(s) here?

The numbers sited above indicate very, very high numbers of uninsured or sliding scale customers at all locations. Nanjemoy would not be any different. And the county is paying or giving free rent at this location. So why the dip (or claim in revenue) in the numbers here for Nanjemoy?

Several new initiatives at the Non-Profit certainly have taken place since 04' which may be affecting the overall numbers; the opening of the Glenarden apartments in 04', the WIC program in 05'in Oxon Hill, and the pediatric services in Oxon Hill in 07'. Have we seen monetary resources drained elsewhere and Nanjemoy is the unfortunate beneficiary in the form of closing? I don't know, but given just the numbers, it certainly could be possible.

We need a meeting...

We need answers…

We deserve more…

The meeting that was held between the Greater Baden BOD and our County Commissioners and the Charles County Chamber of Commerce was closed for "personnel reasons". Where are the minutes? Why wasn’t just that part of the meeting closed or held private? What happened to all this talk of transparency?

The company was not operating at a loss for 07', as their annual report showed.

The annual for 08' is not available, and as I stated, the numbers just are not there to qualify what they are saying so far.

Overall Greater Baden serves uninsured and sliding scale customers; according to their own report. Rent is $255k, but Nanjemoy is free so it is a win. How much would a location in La Plata or Waldorf or White Plains cost in rent and add to their budget?

Bad debt (07")was only $50k, yet debt collection was $112k. If I were the CFO, I would write off the bad debt and do away with the debt collection (unless there was more to that story, i.e., they can show some collection for that money spent, but that is not showing up on their books?!), so the $112k spent on debt collection, still equals $167K. Again, I would rather write off the original $50k and save the $112 if nothing were to come from the $112k spent (probably lawyers, etc.).

Bottom line, there is just a lot of talk of numbers and not much about the "mission" and "vision" here.

Both private and public entities just need to step up here and make this happen. This is crucial to survival of the human element of a community and no one should lose focus of that.

For several weeks our Governor and Congress and President have been talking in the "B" billions and "T" trillions, of "our" money and what "they" want to do with it. How "they" want to "help us".

Well, "help us" then...

If this Health Clinic does close it will not just impact those whom it serves but an entire community, the lives of an entire county, people with whom you work, go to Church, with whom your child goes to school, people you see every day at the stores, young, old, of every color and of all social and financial backgrounds.

Review the patients served by this provider and see that Greater Baden is a community server of all; serving all within our community, but yes serving mostly those within our community who will have no where else to go. And when that happens they will do just that; go no where else. We all no what happens when the afflicted or the poor or the non-insured have no where else to go out of no choice of there own. We all suffer in more ways than one.

And today, in our world that could describe anyone of us. That could be any of our families today or tomorrow. But right now it is our neighbors and they need our help and we must help because it is our duty.

Pay 4 Pray

Recently within our community of worship it has taken on a strong emphasis to talk about the economy. However, not the national or even the local so much as the parish and the state of the Church.

Now it is not difficult to draw a straight line from what is going on in the national economy and locally to what is happening within our own Church and her budget woes, however, we do have a history here. Further, what is happening now is that those (few) of us sitting in the pews each Sunday are being asked to "pledge" specific weekly donations in order that the parish can project what will be coming in so as to properly budget its expenditures.

This may sound financially wise, however, more and more has been asked of the faithful sitting in the pews each week and never before have we been on the dole to "sign up" for how much we will be placing in our envelopes each week.

Moreover, the reasons for the budget shortfalls of the Church and our diocese and our parish specifically are many, and have been "bailed out" over and over by those faithful time in and time out. From the multi-million dollar sex scandal that cost our Church more than just dollars, but trust, property, a lot of it's reputation, many parishioners, closed schools, priests and nuns leaving the profession to the waste the Archdiocese of Washington spent over a period of 10 years to the tune of 70million dollars on a consortium of schools that lost millions each year only to close in the end (to be run by a private non-Catholic entity) and while ignoring the fact that their enrollment in these schools catered to children predominately NOT Catholic (most of the children enrolled in the consortium for instance, were over 68% non-Catholic).

Spending millions on Catholic schools with enrollment predominately NOT Catholic AND not attempting to swing these families into our rolls of Catholicism, ultimately will leave us broke.

While some or most of those children and families may be Christian, they are not Catholic and not sitting in the pews at Mass with us on Sundays and assisting us with monetary support. This may sound petty -excuse the pun- but this is an important part of our ministry. If it were not then the Church would not be asking those few of us there now to be Paying to Pray now!

However, those few of us there are simply can not continue to sustain for the masses. We simply can not keep supplying the monetary needs necessary for our children (alone sometimes) and the 70% not sitting with us. The 30% just can not help out the 100%. The parishes are getting older and older and the younger generations simply can not afford to supply the monetary demand being placed upon them.

The answer is for the diocese to close schools, raise tuitionsa and ask us to Pay 4 Pray. This is not acceptable.

So answers are that the enrollment numbers reflect a demographic shift to the South. I am not sure how this has come to the Arch-diocese, but most if not all, High Schools still have a demand for seats so how come the elementary and middle schools are below enrollment? Do families with smaller children move South and families with older (high school age children) move to this area? I don't know but I don't buy that answer to the enrollment problems of the elementary and middle schools.

Our schools must remain true to our Church's core belief and remain Catholic in her teachings and earnestly recruit Catholics into her faith! Every week I have a pastor from a local Church come by my house and ask me to stop by his church (not the same pastor for the same church, but different pastors from different churches) but never have I seen a local Catholic priest stop by a home and invite someone to their Church. Moreover, this is what should be happening at our schools. We should be having recruitment opportunities for the kids and their families several times per year at the school and at different parishes with special masses inviting them to join our community of worship.

That is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus would want us to do. This would help us with our Pay 4 Pray too.