New health center serving Bingham better

BINGHAM – Dr. Cynthia Robertson pushed off the floor with her foot, and the wheels of her stool quickly took the doctor from a corner in an examination room at the 2-year-old Bingham Area Health Center to a young woman seated on an examining table.

“How are you?” Robertson asked Erin Ingersoll, 19, of Solon as her eyes peered at the patient over her eyeglasses.

Ingersoll, whose left hand was severed by a miter saw in a freak accident in December 2001 and later reattached, told Robertson that nerve damage in her hand was causing back pain and migraine headaches, generally making her life miserable.

“It’s pretty painful right now, and it’s tight,” Ingersoll said of her hand.

Robertson listened patiently as Ingersoll spoke about her pain and other life issues troubling her, including the fact that jobs were scarce. Having Robertson listen to her concerns and make recommendations in the bright examination room helped relieve stress for Ingersoll.

“I feel comfortable around her,” Ingersoll said of Robertson.

Ingersoll’s visits to the Bingham health facility in years past were not always as comfortable, nor did Robertson or William Bookheim, a physician’s assistant, have such freedom to move about in the examination rooms. Until 2002, the health center, one of 11 HealthReach Community Health Centers in central and western Maine, operated in a cramped house that had been converted into office space. Now they are considering expanding even further to provide badly needed dental care.

In the old health clinic, Ingersoll and other patients often had to stand in a closet-size waiting room or perch on a stairwell to the second floor until they could see the doctor in one of two tiny examination rooms. Patients in wheelchairs met with medical professionals in a bathroom, the only room wide enough for them to maneuver.

“I can tell you that I had nightmares the first three months [in the new clinic] that we might have to go back,” Robertson said during a recent interview. After years of close contact in the former clinic, Robertson joked that she and her co-workers were afraid they would miss one another in the new facility.

Before the Bingham Area Health Council began its $500,000 fund-raising campaign to build the new facility, Robertson said she and other employees were so desperate for more space that they had talked about purchasing an adjacent vacant building and constructing a bridge or tunnel to it.

Robertson is glad the far-fetched idea was never initiated because, she said, “there’s no better” place in which to work than the new center that features 10 examination rooms, two laboratories, a spacious waiting area, a large business office, a conference room and doctors offices.

Colorful artwork purchased with money from the King and Jean Cummings Charitable Trust Fund and the Western Mountains Fund decorates the center’s off-white walls. Among the works are pieces done by Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni and faculty and local artists including photographers Martha Young and Richard Garrett, a health council member from Wellington.

Numbers over the examining room doors are frescos done by Barbara Sullivan. A jungle scene painted on three walls of a children’s waiting area by Valley High School art students and their teacher, Mary Shainin Lightbody, capture the hearts of youngsters. A giving tree painted on another wall identifies significant donors who contributed to the construction of the new center, which opened two years ago.

Stephen E. Walsh, HRCHC president and chief executive officer, called it “incredible” what the local health center council was able to accomplish in fund raising in just three years.

The only thing incredible to Garrett and council vice president Mike Morris of Bingham was the fact that contractor Sheridan Corp. of Portland had the building up and ready for occupancy within three months. Garrett and Morris already knew the community would be supportive of a new building.

The health center, which soon will celebrate its 30th anniversary, is a godsend to residents in this remote region, for without it they would have to travel at least 30 minutes to the nearest facility in Guilford or Skowhegan.

“Traveling to the hospital is quite a journey compared to obtaining service in town,” Garrett said. “The elderly find the trip to Skowhegan, at best, daunting in the winter.” Quite often people don’t need to travel to the hospital at all; they use the health center for physicals, colds, prescriptions, mental health, referrals to specialists and other services, he explained.

“Located in rural communities where care is needed but scarce, our health centers improve access by providing individuals care regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay,” Walsh said recently. He said about 35 percent of the clinic’s patients are enrolled in Medicaid programs, about 25 percent are on Medicare, approximately 25 percent have commercial insurance, and the remainder have no insurance but pay on a sliding scale depending on their income. Those with no income receive free health care. Patient fees, federal grants and individual donations fund the private, nonprofit HRCHC center in Bingham, which has seen increased use, he said.

The local clinic has about 8,000 patient visits a year and serves about 2,100 patients, according to Carolsue Hill, medical practice manager. Hill, who began her job the day the center opened 29 years ago, recalled serving seven patients that day. She has framed photographs on the wall of the space she had in the former clinic as a reminder of her humble beginnings.

“It didn’t take long to realize we would outgrow that facility and would need a larger facility,” Hill said recently.

Today, the center provides primary health care services as well as mental health and substance abuse counseling, childbirth education classes, teen pregnancy and parenting support, according to Hill.

Dental services also are offered on a limited basis, according to Walsh. “Oral health is such a critical part of overall health,” he said. The dental professionals are finding conditions inside of mouths that they have never seen before because of the lack of dental care, Walsh said. “It’s a very challenging professional situation.”

While Walsh wants to ensure the need in the area is enough for longtime sustainability, Garrett and council members already have started a fund-raising campaign to build a dental clinic behind the health center. Blueprints for the facility were done before the health’s clinic construction. The cost is estimated at $350,000 to $400,000, according to Garrett.

“It’s an attempt at aggressive holistic care,” Garrett said.

That’s care that Robertson sees as vital. The new facilities will ensure that patient needs will be met in the region. “It means there will be capacity for health care in this community for a long time,” she said.