The People’s Health Clinic has announced they have a new Medical Director. As it turns out, he’s a familiar face—Dr. John Hanrahan, the former Medical Director and a co-founder of the Health Clinic some 20 years ago.
Hanrahan announced last winter that he was leaving the Clinic, which provides medical treatment for the uninsured, though he would still work there as a volunteer.
He said then he was undertaking a new position with Utah Rotary. But the situation with that job changed.
“The time commitment for that has dropped off dramatically over the last year. And so I was back looking for what I’m gonna do next, and talked to Beth and the position was still available and so I said, please, please hire me back.”
Health Clinic Executive Director Beth Armstrong noted they have numerous medical volunteers, who will help the two regular staff, Dr. Hanrahan and Services Director Rachelle Flinn. Hanrahan said his job isn’t changing much.
“As Medical Director, I primarily will be providing clinical care for our patients, but will additionally be handling Medical Director administrative duties—kind of supervising our volunteer providers, our mid-level providers, running our key performance indicators program, things like that. (Carolyn) And how many volunteers are we talking about? (Armstrong) Right now we have about 43 medical providers and on top of that, another 100 or so non-medical providers at the clinic.”
Some days, they said, the clinic has up to five providers.
Last year, the Health Clinic had close to 10,000 patient visits. Armstrong said they see about 40 patients a day.
Although Utah has now approved full Medicaid expansion, they don’t anticipate seeing an increase in patients due to that change.
Hanrahan said when the People’s Clinic began, it was difficult to refer patients for further medical treatment. But now they have more of a support network.
“For instance, I may have someone that needs to see an orthopedist. And we have the High North Peda group that’ll seen them, either pro bono or at a very very reduced cost. We have a similar set-up now with the Rosenberg-Cooley clinic. We also have two volunteer orthopedists who see patients at out clinic. So that gets covered. And if they need tests and exams and surgery, well, Intermountain Health Care has a program whereby they’ll reduce costs to patients who meet their financial criteria.”
Hanrahan said that for now, he doesn’t have a lot of new initiatives in mind as he returns to his old job. But he said he would like to make some advances for their patients with diabetes.
“That’s kind of rampant in our patient population. And we have kind of a reasonable amount of success—our patients do, I should say, but we’d really like to do better with that.”
They said the Clinic’s hours are generally 8 to 5, Monday to Thursday, except for Tuesday’s hours that extend to 7 p.m. On Friday, their hours run to noon.
“We were originally only seeing patients when we moved into the Summit County Health Department building three days a week. We expanded that to five days a week, and then recently expanded Monday to a full day. So I anticipate at some point we’ll expand Friday to a full day as well, just depending on patient need.”
Executive Director Beth Armstrong and returning Medical Director John Hanrahan from the People’s Health Clinic. Hanrahan added they do ask patients for a $25 donation per visit, and up to 85 percent of their patients pay some portion toward that.
