NEWS

Community HealthCare Connections will close next month

Dillon Davis
Battle Creek Enquirer
Community HealthCare Connections will close in Battle Creek in January 2017.

Community HealthCare Connections and the Nursing Clinic of Battle Creek will close next month, citing changes in health care and an inability to sustain funding.

The agency, which acts as a resource for uninsured and underinsured residents of Calhoun County, was spawned out of a 2009 merger between the Nursing Clinic of Battle Creek and the Calhoun Health Plan, according to Monday news release. It has been funded in the past by local organizations including Bronson Battle Creek, the Battle Creek Community Foundation, the United Way of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo Region and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, among others.

However, the agency said it has seen an reduction in its funding of "roughly $780,000 per year," which it says is related to the Affordable Care Act, pharmacy rebates and cuts to Federal Indigent Care funding.

Community HealthCare Connections at a crossroads

"This, along with cuts and changes in the strategic focus of many of our major funders has led to this sad decision," the agency said Monday.

Community HealthCare Connections Executive Director Barbara Travis detailed some of the funding struggles, worded almost identically as Monday's news release, in a November guest column in the Enquirer. Travis wrote that CHC was "investigating diverse funding streams and approaches to build stable and sustainable funding," but required financial donations and volunteerism to help increase capacity in its clinic at 62 E. Michigan Ave. in downtown Battle Creek.

CHC said it will use December and January to transition patients to other providers, to help them with medication refills and assist in location other resources "to make this transition as easy as possible." Travis said the organization has more than 1,200 individuals who use its services, such as the Prescription Drug Access Program, the Health Assistance Fund and the Lions Club Eyeglass Program.

The organization is governed by an eight-member board, including its president, Jim Moreno of the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center; vice president, Ruth Clark of Integrated Health Partners; and secretary Nidia Wolf of the Albion Health Care Alliance.

Contact Dillon Davis at 269-966-0698 or dwdavis@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DillonDavis