For N.Va. Health Care, An Injection of Funding

When the doors of a health center in Loudoun County opened for the first time yesterday, offering many uninsured residents their first medical home, it was in part because of a small, now-defunct hospital in Alexandria and a complex court case dating back a dozen years.

Out of that shuttered facility and litigation, which twice was fought to the Virginia Supreme Court, came a charity with millions of dollars to spend across the region. Its singular mission: to improve health care, especially for people who have little.

And so this week in Leesburg, the Loudoun Community Health Center began seeing patients. Next month in Woodbridge, a new central pharmacy plans to start filling low-cost prescriptions for a host of safety-net clinics. From Herndon to Baileys Crossroads to Arlington County, the inaugural round of grants from the Northern Virginia Health Foundation is helping to add services and hours.

"You can have a significant impact," said Patricia Mathews, the foundation's interim executive director. "These are very important organizations in the community, and they're dealing with really difficult problems."

The $43 million foundation arrives on the scene as issues of poverty and affordable health care move further into once largely insulated suburbs. Despite its affluence, Loudoun counts more than 20,000 residents without insurance. Fairfax County might have four times that. Many are working poor, who rely on typically overwhelmed programs for medical, dental and mental health services.

They will benefit directly from the lawsuit filed in Alexandria Circuit Court in 1995. The state sued directors of Jefferson Memorial Hospital for wrongfully appropriating its assets after turning the decades-old nonprofit facility off Shirley Highway into a for-profit business. Not until five years ago was the case concluded, with the state winning a multimillion-dollar decree, and not until two years ago was the new entity created to shepherd the money.

"Undoubtedly, the entire community gains when the overall health of the community is improved and when the basic needs of one's neighbors are met," then-attorney general Jerry Kilgore said at the time.

Neither Mathews nor anyone else expects the $1.1 million in grants just disbursed to solve the escalating problems with health-care access. But as one of the few foundations in the Washington area concerned exclusively with local health issues -- one of two focused on Northern Virginia -- the year-old organization can work with others to tackle them.

The grant to the Loudoun center, the first in the county to offer full-time primary care for low-income families, was nearly 10 percent of start-up costs covered by a variety of government, business and other philanthropic sources. The $75,000 went "a long way" toward purchasing medical equipment and supplies, Executive Director Debra Dever said.

"We're already getting inundated with calls and patients who want to get scheduled," she said Thursday while attending to the final pre-opening details. "When you start looking at it deeper, the need is pretty unbelievable."

The foundations in this area have some substantial resources for assisting. The richest, the $92 million Horizon Foundation, formed in the late 1990s after Howard County General Hospital joined the Johns Hopkins University medical system, supports activities in Howard County. In Montgomery County, the Healthcare Initiative Foundation has seen its endowment hit $60 million; a recent announcement said trustees intend "to broaden significantly" what it funds there.

In the future, with local jurisdictions facing similar challenges with the uninsured, these and the other organizations increasingly may do more than hand out money.