El Dorado Community Health Centers (EDCHC) are a Federally Qualified Health Center delivering primary care and serving the medically underserved community. Many patients are low-income, but they are here to provide service to everyone who needs it, regardless of financial status or insurance. Their services are not limited to physical health, as they also offer a range of behavioral health care including the services of psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists. Dental care is also provided at their facilities and as a mobile unit in collaboration with the El Dorado County Office of Education using a dental van to travel to the schools throughout the county, ensuring that all students have access to critical preventative dental care. The El Dorado Community Health Centers strive to provide whole person care, healing both body and mind.
EDCHC is leading the way in the county with a substance use treatment program that has been in place for approximately 5 years. This program uses a proven therapeutic approach to treatment of substances of all kinds, from alcohol to opioids. With the help of EDCHC similar programs have been implemented with the county’s other health care providers, Marshall, Barton, and Shingle Springs Tribal to provide as much coverage as possible to this growing health care need.
Another growing need within the community are services to the homeless population. The El Dorado Community Health Centers partners with Marshall Medical in working to provide these vital services, however, their ability to perform this much needed outreach has been limited. That is all soon to change though, as they have recently received a grant to purchase a state of the art mobile medical unit that will allow them to broaden their outreach with much more regular on-site care for the most vulnerable populations within our community. This mobile medical unit will also be a critical component in other forms of community outreach, allowing EDCHC to take their services into the field making it easier than ever for patients with limited time and transportation to receive the quality of care they need and deserve.
Over the last two years, so much has changed in health care. Prior to 2020, EDCHC utilized only a very limited amount of Telemedicine called, “televisits”, and by March of 2020, 70% of their visits were conducted via online provider to patient mobile devices. The shift was necessary to keep patients and staff safe from contracting COVID-19, but time has shown that televisits are not a replacement for in-person care for many health needs but does allow for appropriate visits such as prescription refills, work better as tele-visits. Well care and physical assessments are most appropriate for in-person visits. The percentage of visits conducted via telemedicine has vacillated over the last two years as the positivity rate in the county has gone up and down, but today about 70% of visits are in-person. Televisits are likely here to stay but will probably be limited to cases where in-person care is unnecessary or as a tool to overcome barriers that prevent a patient from being able to make it to an in-person appointment, such as transportation challenges.
Telemedicine aside, COVID-19 has had other major impacts on the El Dorado Community Health Centers in the form of mental health stress for both staff and patients. This increased mental health stress is especially apparent in the community’s children who have had to cope with isolation from their peers, struggles with remote learning, and other stressors as a result of the pandemic. To help combat the mental health impact, EDCHC uses an integrated approach in their clinics, with behavioral health specialists on site to provide those services if a patient has that need during a medical visit. This gives primary care providers the opportunity to provide a warm handoff to the specialist who can then provide the mental health support that the patient needs.
As things begin to return to a state of normalcy, and EDCHC is seeing more patients in-person, they are really encouraging parents to bring their kids in as many of them have fallen behind on routine health checks due to the pandemic. This is an opportunity to not only check on the physical health of those kids, but to check on their behavioral health as well. The isolation and stress from the last couple years will have long lasting impacts, particularly on kids, and it is critical to identify potential problems early in order to mitigate their effects among our youth.
El Dorado Community Health Centers traces their origins back 20 years where they received their initial funding from a grant applied for by the County and support through Marshall Medical. They were founded to fill a community need in providing primary medical care to the underserved. Since then, they have broadened the scope of their services considerably but still work in close collaboration with not only Marshall Medical and the County but also with Barton and Shingle Springs Tribal. More recently, the Marshall Foundation assisted EDCHC with the purchase of property for their new site. This collaboration leads all parties involved to better serve their respective patients and benefits the community as a whole.
Looking ahead to the future, there are some exciting things on the horizon for El Dorado Community Health Centers. The biggest change coming for EDCHC is the building of a brand new, state of the art 30,000 sq./ft. Placerville facility on Missouri Flat Road. This new facility is slated to open early in the Fall of 2022 and will be the largest and most comprehensive EDCHC facility in the county. In addition to medical services, this new facility will offer dental care, behavioral health care, a pharmacy, an on-site lab, a substance use treatment facility, and optometry!
The El Dorado Community Health Centers are here to serve all of El Dorado County and Executive Director Terri Stratton is excited about the future of EDCHC. Terri sees the partnership and collaborative approach El Dorado County healthcare providers take toward community wellbeing as a shining example. With the opening of the new health center in Placerville, Terri hopes to reach even deeper into the community and provide needed services to even more individuals and families who might not otherwise seek care. The last two years have been a struggle but have also brought opportunity for all of us to pull together as a community, something we do very well.
The El Dorado Community Health Centers are open 6 days a week in Placerville, Cameron Park, and Diamond Springs. You can learn more about the services they offer by visiting www.edcchc.org. They also have an upcoming fundraiser on September 24th at the Smith Flat House, tickets can be purchased at www.edcchc.org/events.
