Las Vegas health nonprofit comes back from brink of financial collapse

How does a nonprofit community health organization on the brink of financial collapse turn the page from extinction to expansion?

In the case of the FirstMed Health and Wellness Center, which operates two Las Vegas clinics for low-income and underserved patients, it took a careful re-examination of business plan basics and a clear demonstration that the organization was filling a critical need, says FirstMed CEO Angela Quinn.

“It surprised me how well this has gone,” she said last week after the group opened its second clinic. “I’m just stunned!”

FirstMed opened its first clinic in 2009, becoming one of only a handful of organizations operating federally qualified health centers in Southern Nevada, according to a news release.

But while the clinic was filling what state officials had identified as a glaring need, it struggled to balance its books. By early this year it was on the brink of losing its federal funding – about $3 million a year.

Enter Quinn, a consultant with the nonprofit group Building Hope Nevada who previously had helped Boulder City Hospital and other organizations shore up their finances. Quinn said she and her team were approached by the FirstMed Board of Directors and agreed to help the organization.

That temporary mission developed into a longer-term assignment in February, when she and her team disbanded Building Hope Nevada and agreed to stay on as board members of FirstMed for at least three years.

In addition to combing through the books, accounting for all funds and assessing payment structures, they went to work to demonstrate the critical need for the clinic’s services and to prove that the new leadership could turn things around.

They succeeded beyond Quinn’s expectations. With help from Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s office, FirstMed won more than $800,000 in additional funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, $600,000 of which was set aside for the new clinic.

Another FirstMed clinic is now expected to open later this year in North Las Vegas.

The federal government has been supportive of community health centers in recent years because they mainly serve low-income populations, offer preventative care that can keep people out of the hospital and prevent unnecessary visits to the emergency room.

Nevada’s centers were recently awarded a total of $366,329 to “invest in health center quality improvement efforts and to provide high quality comprehensive care,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week.

More than 88,000 patients were treated at Nevada community health organizations in 2014, according to the Nevada Primary Care Association.

FirstMed, which says it serves more than 9,000 patients a year, offers free and reduced-price preventative and primary care services to the uninsured and Medicaid and Medicare patients. It also treats privately insured patients, many of whom are referred by other community organizations.

The clinics also provide specialty services, including treatment for children who’ve been sexually exploited.

Esther Rodriguez-Brown, a new FirstMed board member who also works with sex trafficking survivors through the local group The Embracing Project, said FirstMed’s turnaround means it will continue providing critical support to young victims like the one she recently brought into the program.

“She was treated with dignity, and she was treated with respect. She was treated as a human being and as the child that she is,” Rodriguez-Brown said.

Contact Pashtana Usufzy at pusufzy@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Find @pashtana_u on Twitter.