Hudson Headwaters is a network of 19 community health centers across 5,600 square miles of the Adirondacks and northeastern New York state. The facilities are located mostly in rural areas and services are coordinated with regional medical centers. CEO Dr. Tucker Slingerland was in Plattsburgh recently and described to WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley the role of the network and a new initiative that will bring mobile health to small communities.
"We realized that there are many communities, both in the Adirondacks and surrounding communities, that are quite small but have a population or a group of people who are really getting sicker over time partly because folks are getting older. And traditionally we've built health centers but we thought, well, maybe mobile's a way to bring the health to some of these smaller places that would be hard to sustain a traditional health center. And so with the help of the Wood Foundation we have an incredible opportunity to essentially build a fleet of mobile units. 2020 is our planning year. But our hope is that by the end of the year we'll have a mobile unit that we can start to take out to some of these communities. And we feel like we're well on our way to bringing something that will reach a lot of patients that otherwise may not get care."
Hudson Headwaters was 10th nationally by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a ranking of 1,273 centers in 2018 for best overall clinical performance of all federally qualified health centers.
By way of disclosure, Hudson Headwaters has been a WAMC underwriter.
