Columbia Basin Health Association plans to open its new west Pasco medical clinic off Road 68 by fall 2025.

The much-anticipated clinic was originally expected to be completed during summer 2024, but a back and forth about facility sizing and unfavorable construction market conditions temporarily stalled the project.

CBHA is a small local health system operating comprehensive medical clinics in Othello, Connell and Mattawa, as well as a dental clinic in Royal City. The organization bought 18 acres on the northeast corner of North Road 68 and Three Rivers Drive in March 2021.

The federally-qualified CBHA provides medical, dental, mental health, eye care, pharmacy services, health and nutritional coaching, maternity education and more – all under one roof and with next-day appointments available for all services.

CBHA has been operating a small clinic in the suite that formerly housed Grandridge Eye Clinic at 6115 Burden Blvd. since November 2023 to establish a presence in the Pasco community.

The clinic employs two primary care physicians and a rotating psychiatric nurse practitioner.

When the new full-scale clinic is completed in fall 2025, the Burden Boulevard clinic team will move there.

With earthwork underway, project officials are waiting on a couple of permits to be finalized.

“It’s been very challenging; we’ve been dealing with every challenge that everyone else is exposed to right now. Between inflation and rising costs, it’s not easy to do a project like this,” said Nieves Gomez, CBHA’s CEO, who explained that when input costs are high, it can be difficult for health care facilities to fund new projects due to an inability to simply raise service prices to supply capital.

The project is estimated to cost $5.1 million, according to building permits filed with the city of Pasco.

CBHA is using a mix of funding sources for the project: 51% from patient services, followed by 29% from premiums, 19% from grants and 1% from other sources.

In response to the shortage of primary care physicians in Franklin County, CBHA’s leadership decided to add an additional medical suite, bringing the new facility’s size up to 35,000 square feet over the originally planned 27,000 square feet.

CBHA will construct the clinic and then build out the suites in three phases. At full capacity, the facility will house 15 medical care providers and six dental providers.

Analysis by CBHA found that Franklin County ranks last in population-to-provider ratios. To get into a primary care provider in the Tri-Cities area can take between three to six months, and it would take an additional 120 providers in the area to reduce this wait time, Gomez said. CBHA also said there is a need for additional behavioral health and dental services, as well as providers accepting Medicaid-insured patients.

Like other CBHA clinics, the Pasco clinic will offer medical, dental, vision, nutrition, behavioral health, psychiatric care and a pharmacy all under one roof.

There are 25,000 to 30,000 Medicaid patients in the Tri-City region, according to CBHA estimates.

CBHA prides itself on providing care to people regardless of their ability to pay, predominantly serving Medicaid-managed and uninsured patients at a proportion of 58% and 16%, respectively, of their payer mix. Privately-insured patients make up 20% of their base and Medicare-provided patients make up 6%.

CBHA served 40,140 unique patients across nearly 200,000 visits at its clinics last year. Of those, more than 4,000 were from the Pasco area and 34% of the Connell clinic’s nearly 8,800 patients hailed from a Tri-City zip code, including Benton City and Burbank.

Need for behavioral health providers

“Demand for behavioral health services is still growing fast,” Gomez said. “Unfortunately, the state has recently made some changes to reimbursement for some mental health care providers.”

He explained that under new laws, unlicensed behavioral health care providers, such as those operating with associate licensure, are no longer required to be reimbursed at the same rate as licensed providers. Gomez said that this hampers recruitment efforts in rural communities already struggling to attract behavioral health professionals, particularly bilingual Spanish speakers who are desperately needed to serve CBHA’s largely Spanish-speaking patient population.

Gomez said that about half of CBHA’s providers fall into the unlicensed category.

Further exacerbating the situation is the shortage of providers in Tri-Cities. “A lot of providers are capped,” he said, referring to providers who can’t accommodate any more patients. “We’re seeing a large referral base from outside clinics.”

CBHA’s leadership team has been in talks with Kadlec’s leadership about how the two health systems can work together to better serve the needs of the community.

Kadlec’s chief medical officer, Dr. Richard Meadows, was scheduled to speak at the CBHA groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 10.

“Kadlec is now referring all behavioral health cases to CBHA,” Gomez said.

Laura Follett, a registered nurse and population health programs manager at Kadlec, provided the following statement about the new partnership with CBHA: “Kadlec partners with Columbia Basin Health Association to help our most vulnerable patients and community members receive the behavioral health access they need. CBHA has been a great partner in getting prompt access and quality care.”

Gomez also noted that CBHA has a memorandum of understanding established with the Othello, Connell and Mattawa school districts to provide dental, vision and behavioral health screenings with follow-up at its clinics. He said he hopes to similarly partner with the Pasco School District.

“Nobody in my family ever wore glasses; then my own twins got screened and now they have glasses. We had zero awareness of the challenges they were experiencing,” he said, adding, “We are committed to offering the best services we can to this community.”

CBHA is proud of being involved in the communities it serves. It has hosted over 50 community events and participated in over 75 community events in 2023.

The efforts of this small health system haven’t gone unnoticed. For five years running, CBHA has been recognized as one of Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work, and in 2022 and 2023 received the Best and Brightest recognition nationally and for the Pacific Northwest. CBHA is joint commission accredited and is an Health Resources and Services Administration health center quality leader.