High Hopes For Healthier Washington

The term "medical home" has been around since the late 1960s, coined in reference to special-needs children and coordinated, centralized care to best serve them and their families. The providers involved in Medical Homes DC give that concept their unqualified support for the District's more than 200,000 low-income residents, many of whom lack health insurance.

"It's not just building bricks and mortar for everybody. It's having the expectation of quality medical care for everybody," said Mary Ann Sack, health services administrator of So Others Might Eat.

"It means people have a health-care 'home' they go to regularly, someplace where everyone knows them, where they feel comfortable," said Kelly Sweeney McShane, executive director of the nonprofit Community of Hope.

In addition to city funding, the individual programs and the nonprofit association hope to raise or leverage more than $145 million from foundations and other backers. Another $500,000 will be awarded this year as part of a second round of planning grants targeting several neighborhoods: Zip code 20002 in Northeast, for example, and two specific areas of Wards 7 and 8.

The focus is welcome attention for Ward 7's council representative, Vincent C. Gray (D). His area has more than 15,000 seniors, he said, yet fewer than a dozen primary care physicians. It has only four community clinics (including one for women only and another for children), in contrast to Ward 1, where a half-dozen full-service programs operate within a couple miles of one another. Gray criticized the first round of grant announcements after only one award went to a project specifically serving his constituents.

"I want to see us step up the pace in Ward 7," he said. "We've never had, to my knowledge, clinics that were first class."

Vincent Keane, chief executive of Unity Health Care, agrees. Unity is ready to move from its Hunt Place Health Center, a windowless, ugly brick box a block off Minnesota Avenue NE in Ward 7 where staff members paint over dirty walls, patch leaks and try to ignore missing ceiling tiles. Despite its problems, which extend beyond aesthetics, the clinic has an ophthalmologist, dentist, podiatrist, psychiatrist and nutritionist -- health-care professionals otherwise in short supply in the ward. Each sees patients there on a constricted schedule.

"We're looking at making these clinics state of the art and bringing in more specialty care," Keane said.

With its Medical Homes grant, Unity, like other recipients, will be able to work with a special consulting group, developers and an architectural firm. Keane enthusiastically awaits actual construction.

"The bottom line is planning, planning, planning, but you've got to put a shovel in the ground," he said.