Fiscal Year 2025 Expanded Hours. - Catherine’s Health Center (Catherine’s) proposes increasing hours at the Mel Trotter Ministries (Mel Trotter) site from 3 hours per week to 40 hours per week. This site is located within the largest homeless shelter in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. As a 330(h) recipient, Catherine’s provides healthcare to the homeless through traditional primary care clinics, as well as placed-based clinics embedded within trusted service providers, like Mel Trotter. The Mel Trotter campus includes a health clinic with three exam rooms, a dental suite, and resource navigation. Since June 2022, Catherine’s has provided onsite enabling services and telepsychiatry services to the guests at Mel Trotter. Since November 2023, primary care services, including Hepatitis C treatment, have been provided every Wednesday morning at the Mel Trotter clinic by a Catherine’s provider. Mel Trotter staff have asked Catherine’s to provide increased primary care hours at the shelter due to Catherine’s proven success on Wednesday mornings. With funding for expanded hours, Catherine’s will build consistent hours and staffing, further building trust with homeless patients and increasing access to care. Along with the addition of hours at the Mel Trotter clinic, Catherine’s plans to add integrated SUD, dental care, and case management to the primary care offerings already there. In 2019, prior to Catherine’s becoming a FQHC, a clinic in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids, near Mel Trotter, permanently closed. This clinic primarily served the homeless and was well trusted by the community, and its closure has had a deep impact. In 2023, there were 1,239 homeless individuals in Kent County. This is a roughly 70% increase since 2019. Kent County has the third highest rate of homelessness in the state, at 188 homeless per 100,000 people. Since the homeless clinic closed, there is not much available for this population outside of the Emergency Department. By operating with consistent hours and staff, and with the barrier reductions that an FQHC can offer, Catherine’s will reestablish a designated homeless health clinic in Grand Rapids within a trusted space already servicing the population. Due to the transient nature of the population, much of the expanded hours at Mel Trotter will be utilized by new patients, requiring longer appointment slots and allowing for convenience care and walk-in appointments. The clinic will be open to all community members, not just those utilizing services at Mel Trotter, with a specialty focus on other homeless and housing unstable individuals. This clinic will include primary care, SUD treatment, mental health services, dental, psychiatry, and a pharmacy. With expanded hours funding, Catherine’s Health Center proposes the following objectives: 1) By four months, Catherine’s 5B changes are approved and hours are expanded to 40 hours a week with a case manager onboarded and offering services. 2) By six months, an Advanced Practice Provider, Medical Assistant, Dental Hygienist, Homeless Health Care Manager, and Front Desk Receptionist are hired and onboarded. 40 hours of case management; 20 hours of primary medical care, dental hygiene, and laboratory services; 3 hours of enabling services; and 3 hours of psychiatry are provided per week. 3) By eighteen months, a Pharmacist and Pharmacy technician will be hired and operate an on-site pharmacy 40 hours a week.
