Drum health plan works around loss of funding

WASHINGTON — The executive director of the Fort Drum Regional Health Planning Organization said Wednesday that the loss of $500,000 in potential federal funding this week will not hurt operations, as grants and other funding streams keep the partnership going.

“We’re fine for 2012,” said FDRHPO Executive Director Denise Young.

Ms. Young said she did not expect to win the $500,000 that Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, and Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., sought through an annual defense programs bill.

Mr. Owens had steered the funding through the House Armed Services Committee, but a House-Senate conference committee struck it in a compromise bill, along with many other items geared toward lawmakers’ districts. The measure was expected to pass the House Wednesday night.

Although the FDRHPO has been working with Mr. Owens to secure the funds, Ms. Young said the organization realized months ago that the funding stream it had become used to — “earmarks” inserted by lawmakers — had dried up due to an earmarks moratorium in Congress. Even the creative means Mr. Owens was employing, using a method devised by the Republican majority to steer funds toward their districts, did not change that picture.

“For us, it makes a lot more sense if an earmark isn’t the main source,” Ms. Young said.

Mr. Owens said Tuesday that he has tried about all available options in Congress; his office hasn’t ruled out an appeal to Mr. McHugh, now secretary of the Army, for inclusion in the next budget request.

The FDRHPO uses far more money from other sources and is becoming a key part of the north country’s health care system, Ms. Young said. The organization is undertaking $6 million worth of projects this year, funded by state, federal and nongovernmental grants.

Among other work, the FDRHPO is helping to upgrade health information technology at five north country hospitals, she said — Samaritan Medical Center, Watertown; E.J. Noble Hospital, Gouverneur; Carthage Area Hospital; Lewis County General Hospital, Lowville; and River Hospital, Alexandria Bay. Because of the organization’s work, those hospitals can share patient information electronically.

“That’s improving health care for everyone in the region,” Ms. Young said.

In part because of the organization’s efforts, an additional 70 behavioral health providers are serving the area through the military’s Tricare health insurance program, she said. And the organization has paid stipends to health professionals as incentive to come to the region. Upstate Medical Center, based in Syracuse, now offers degrees at Jefferson Community College because of the FDRHPO’s efforts, she said.

“We are bringing up the whole quality of health care for the entire region,” Ms. Young said.

The organization is looking to the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services for an “innovation” grant that would help improve care and keep costs down, Ms. Young said, as well as a possible grant to bring more specialty providers to the area.

She said she also met two weeks ago in Washington with officials from the Tricare Management Activity, which oversees Tricare, to discuss how the insurance program can support the FDRHPO on a continuing basis.