Greater Lawrence Family Health Center

Overview

Location: Lawrence, Massachusetts

Website: http://www.glfhc.org/

Residency Programs: Family Medicine

Additional Programs: Obstetrics Fellowship, Integrative Medicine Fellowship (H.I.P Fellowship), Faculty development Fellowship, Lawrence Latino Nursing Program

Description:  The Greater Lawrence Family Health Center (GLFHC) is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) caring for inhabitants of Lawrence and its neighboring communities since 1980.  In 1994 it sponsored the first Teaching Health Center residency in the country.  The Lawrence Family Medicine Residency (affiliated with the University of Massachusetts and Tufts) has expanded to be a 10-10-10 program, and has 127+ Alumni who are working in underserved communities all over the country and the world. The Health Center’s clinicians provide over 200,000 visits annually in its four primary care clinical sites, 2 school-based health clinics, inpatient hospital services and deliver nearly 800 babies. GLFHC was certified as a Level 3 Patient Centered Medical Home by NCQA in 2011. GLFHC staff cares for patients throughout their lives, and includes 80+ family physicians, pediatricians, internists, OB-GYNs, NPs and PAs as well as 29 family medicine residents. Besides ongoing primary continuity care, acute care is available seven days a week at GLFHC clinics including expanded evening hours. GLFHC also offers high-risk obstetrics, HIV comprehensive care, colposcopy, mammography and on site pharmacy services. Approximately 65 percent of the Health Center staff members are bicultural residents of the local area and 75 percent are bilingual.

Program History

GLFHC is a non-profit, federally funded, community health center which is the ACGME accredited sponsor of the LFMR (30 Residents – 10 in each of 3 years, as of 2012-2013).

Prior to GLFHC’s establishment in 1980, many who lived in Lawrence and the neighboring communities had no access to health care providers.  Clinicians assigned through the National Health Service Corps (NHSC) came, burned out and left. Consequently, Lawrence lagged behind the rest of the state of Massachusetts on virtually all health status indicators. 

The Health Center had the idea of trying to attract more primary care physicians by starting a Family Medicine Residency, and although, the feasibility study said it would not be viable, they did it anyway.

By appealing to 6 newly graduated Family Physicians from Brown Family Medicine Residency (R.I.) to come to work in Lawrence, with the promise that if they came, then they would start a Residency, Lawrence saw a sudden growth in the number of primary care physicians all in one month.

The President of Lawrence General Hospital took notice and the negotiations and affiliation between these two organizations who shared a vision of helping the poor citizens of Lawrence by improving their access to quality and affordable care began...

Together they forged the unique relationship that created the first Community Health Center sponsored Residency in the country. 

The first “Teaching Health Center” grew from a staff of 10 serving 3,000 patients at a renovated funeral home, to 20 years later, claiming more than 525 employees (80+ Family Physicians) serving over 44,000 patients at four newly built or renovated primary care clinics in the 7 square miles of the immigrant city. 

GLFHC was ahead of the curve in adopting an Electronic Health Record as well as other advanced data collection systems. GLFHC secured a significant 10 year grant in the year 2000 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):  Latino Health 2010 Improving Health, related to Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes.  This new funding helped fuel the efforts to collect patient outcome care data from the EHR and glean from it how to better treat patients in this relatively medically isolated community.  Since most of the patients had transportation and language barriers discouraging them from going to Boston (the next closest health care option) and since there still weren’t many other primary care physicians, the research being done here was relatively low on confounding variables, and this led to strong research outcomes.

Historically a 8/8/8 residency program, with Massachusetts health care insurance reform providing coverage and still unmet primary care access needs in the Greater Lawrence area, GLFHC applied for HRSA funding to expand the residency program to 10/10/10 under the Teaching Health Center provision of the ACA.

Most recently, GLFHC has devoted much effort to creating a Patient Centered Medical Home model for care. In May 2011, GLFHC received NCQA Level 3PCMH Recognition and is committed to training its family medicine residents in this model.