Creating Primary Care Access in Dannemora, NY

• Use funds for startup costs, including equipment purchase and cash flow for the first quarter of operations, as well as to leverage private investments;
• Renovate the new site to meet New York State Department of Health’s Article 28 standards;
• Offer comprehensive medical care to all—including patients with Medicaid, the uninsured, and underinsured—within the model of the Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike program
• Administer mental health counseling;
• Provide language interpreters to assist the inmate population in the region; and
• Create a financially sustainable health center through patient and 340B pharmacy program revenues.

Upon reviewing other possible primary care expansion projects in the region, the board of directors and executive director of Smith House decided to postpone the opening of the satellite CHC in Dannemora. Instead, Smith House purchased the primary care practice of Dr. Radny Stoloff in Plattsburgh and partnered with Elizabethtown Community Hospital to assist with the operation and management of the Willsboro Clinic, one of Elizabethtown’s three primary care health centers. The Elizabethtown Community Hospital eventually absorbed Smith House, which proved to be a cost-effective merger that secured quality health care services for residents of the Adirondack mountain region.