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Flagstaff clinic wins $7.4M
North Country HealthCare federal stimulus grant will mean 12 more exam rooms in Flagstaff and two new clinics in Holbrook and Springerville.

By CYNDY COLE
Arizona Daily Sun
December 10, 2009

Flagstaff-based North Country HealthCare will receive $7.4 million to build and expand health clinics under competitive federal stimulus funding announced Wednesday. Canyonlands Community Health Care on the Arizona Strip north of Grand Canyon will receive $2.1 million "This is really exciting for us," said Liz Latham, chief executive of Canyonlands, which also has clinics in Page and on the Navajo Nation. In Flagstaff, it means the new North Country HealthCare building on Fourth Street will add 12 more exam rooms, 13 more physicians, nurse practitioners or physician assistants, and perhaps 15 staff to work with them, according to the agency's top medical officer. North Country also plans to build new clinics in Holbrook and Springerville.

The once all-volunteer clinic run formed in 1991 and run out of a former roller skating rink, fund-raised for years to build its current Fourth Street clinic. It outgrew the new facility in a matter of weeks. "Rural Arizona has a serious problem with access to primary care," Chief Medical Officer Andrew Saal said, in a statement. "When a workforce isn't healthy, the local economy suffers as well. Holbrook, Round Valley and Flagstaff have steadily lost primary care providers over the past decade. Even with insurance, many people find that local physicians are not accepting new patients. North Country hopes to become the medical home to 10,000 additional patients over the next two years." North Country used previous stimulus dollars to begin keeping electronic health records, open a new clinic in Show Low and expand clinics in Kingman, Lake Havasu City, and Winslow.

In a speech on Wednesday, President Barack Obama referred to one of the Canyonlands clinics 30 miles southeast of Kayenta, where doctors were working out of a former chicken coop. Obama was speaking of community health centers, which receive some federal funding to serve patients in poor or rural areas. The organizations won the stimulus money on a highly competitive basis, as part of $500 million awarded nationally by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.