Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center (JPA), a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), aims to be the leading preventative and comprehensive primary healthcare provider in New York and is committed to ensuring inclusion, non-discrimination, and equal access to all, regardless of ability to pay. With five locations across New York City, JPA has been serving the community for more than 35 years. Service offerings include but are not limited to: adult and family medicine, dental services, behavioral health care, women’s health services, endocrinology, and pediatric care.
Editor's note: This story was originally published in August 2022, and was updated in September 2023.
Challenge
Looking back on the hardest days of the pandemic, Miriam Y. Vega, PhD, Chief Executive Officer at JPA says, “We feel like we’ve been through combat.” Not only did the organization remain open, but they increased their service offerings and liaised between the government and the community to deliver vital care.
“One of the things that has come from the pandemic is more recognition of how important community health centers are to communities and I’m hoping there will be more interest in investing in them,” says Ari Benjamin, MD, Chief Medical Officer at JPA. “I would love to see some of the funding that’s given to big hospitals goto the community health centers instead. We should invest in the patients at the preventative level to prevent them from ever needing to visit these giant hospitals.”
JPA provides a lot of services on a day-to-day basis that aren’t being properly reimbursed. Dr. Vega and Dr. Benjamin hope the shift to value-based care will change this, especially as the demand for services and the cost of providers continues to increase.
“As a provider, I know I’m a better doctor when I see 15 to 20 patients per day as opposed to 25 to 30. By shifting some of our revenue generation to focus on the quality of care that I’m providing, it makes me a better provider and it makes the patients better,” says Dr. Benjamin.
With more resources, providers, and financial support, Dr. Vega also hopes to address the community trauma that exists within the communities JPA serves. “If you were to score our communities using the ACE survey, they would probably score five or higher, which is pretty high trauma, and this can stay in a community for up to seven generations and can cut a person’s life by 20 years. Having a larger voice, getting maximum reimbursement, and being able to expand services can take big steps to address the community trauma that exists and it can help people live longer lives.”
Improving Quality Care and Longevity with Yuvo Health
JPA has built an impressive and comprehensive list of services and secured partnerships with numerous organizations, including New Horizons and the American Italian Cancer Foundation, making the center well positioned to grow its presence, expand its offerings, and address more substantial community issues. In its newest partnership with Yuvo Health, JPA is strengthening its quality services and revenue to better serve the community.
“Our partnership with Yuvo couldn’t come at a better time to help us pivot and to continue to try and maximize the reimbursements, because the states are still not being great to community health centers in terms of payments,” says Dr. Vega.
In fact, JPA has already seen improvements.
"Since the beginning of our partnership with Yuvo, we have been fortunate enough to see improvements in almost all our quality metrics." said Dr. Vega.
JPA saw progress in key areas, including adolescent immunizations, which reached the 90th percentile, well child visits, and breast cancer screenings. These improvements were made possible through data-driven strategies, patient education, pre-visit planning workflows, and support from the Yuvo Health team.
Dr. Vega and Dr. Benjamin sat down in the below video to talk through the quality metrics improvements in more detail.
"Yuvo has essentially become an extended arm of our provider department," said Dr. Vega.
These improvements will continue to have positive impacts for JPA and the community they serve.
“We need to ensure that we’re in a good partnership so we can maximize these reimbursements to be able to provide that quality care.”
In doing so, JPA can expand its presence and become the go-to place for community members to visit, work at, and engage with the others.
“Improving the quality of care will translate to us being more popular in our community and to be a place where more patients who may not be currently coming to see us would now start to consider it,” Dr. Benjamin explains. “We’re hoping it makes Addabbo [JPA] overall a more attractive organization for patients and staff who want to work here.”
With the partnership, Yuvo acts as an extended arm to JPA in terms of engagement, which Dr. Vega says is “extremely important.”
“I’m very impressed with how engaged Yuvo is and how interested the team is in learning about us and the ways they can improve the services that we’re providing,” says Dr. Benjamin.”
