Memorial, Community Health Center of Buffalo announce alliance

Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center and the Community Health Center of Buffalo, Inc., have filed a Certificate of Need (CON) application with the New York State Health Department to open a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in Niagara Falls.

The Niagara Falls FQHC, to be located at Hamilton B. Mizer Primary Care Center, 501 10th St., will be the first in Niagara County and will greatly increase access to primary and preventative medical care, Memorial President & CEO Joseph A. Ruffolo said.

“Memorial Medical Center has been a pioneer in providing high quality primary care and family medicine services in Niagara Falls for more than 30 years,” Ruffolo said. “This groundbreaking partnership will ensure that those services will not only continue but expand.”

Ruffolo noted that the Mizer Primary Care Center is Niagara’s busiest provider of such services with more than 10,000 patient visits in 2008.  However, the growing needs of the medically underserved in a distressed city with soaring unemployment have driven thousands of patients with medical issues that are not true emergencies – issues that could be addressed in a primary care setting -- to Memorial’s ER1 Emergency Department.

“Treating such patients in the ER is costly and often not in the patients' best interests,” Ruffolo said.  “Additionally, a quantitative community health needs assessment we commissioned last year clearly indicated the community needs additional primary and preventative health care resources.  We reached out to the Buffalo Community Health Center to see if an FQHC would make sense in Niagara.  Clearly, it does.”

Federally Qualified Health Centers break down cultural, geographical and financial barriers to care and are eligible for financial support, including federal funding, that hospitals cannot access, said Community Health Center of Buffalo CEO/Executive Director LaVonne Ansari, Ph.D.

They also place a premium on holistic care and emphasize the importance of linking health care consumers with available community resources and social services.  The FHQC at Niagara will have caseworkers on site to facilitate those linkages, she said.

“We foresee the FQHC satellite facility in Niagara Falls becoming the medical home for thousands of area residents,” Dr Ansari said.  “Working with the community, we will increase access to primary and preventative care, link patients to available support services, improve health care outcomes and eliminate healthcare disparities.”

Pending the receipt of regulatory approvals, the FQHC at Niagara is expected to be open by mid-2010.