Fiscal year 2025 expanded hours. - missoula county-partnership health center (PHC) respectfully requests $500,000 to increase hours of operation by 33.5 hours across 5 access points as a response to…

Fiscal year 2025 expanded hours. - missoula county-partnership health center (PHC) respectfully requests $500,000 to increase hours of operation by 33.5 hours across 5 access points as a response to identified patient and community needs. These expanded hours will facilitate greater ability to schedule appointments and to access PHC's full range of services. Expanded hours grant funding would support partial FTE of our clinical and non-clinical workforce during expanded early morning, late afternoon, evening, and saturday hours at our main creamery clinic access point; our watershed clinic and navigation center targeting unhoused, recently-housed, and justice-involved populations; our alder behavioral health clinic; and two school-based services sites. Funding would also support patient and staff safety during expanded hours, communications and outreach to promote the new hours, and collecting patient input throughout the period of performance. Across all these sites we expect to serve 799 unique patients across 2730 patient encounters. We estimate that roughly 185 of these patients will be new to the health center. Key outcomes for the proposed project will be reducing emergency department visits through appropriate use of primary care and improving the health center penetration rate in the urban core of PHC's service area. This will be accomplished by expanding our primary care hours and adding an eligibility technician to help patients across all sites access health insurance to facilitate primary care access and avoid exacerbation of medical conditions that may result in emergency department utilization.