Community Health Program preparing to meet financial challenges

Unlike private health care companies whose mission is to make money, CHP’s is to provide healthcare for all of Berkshire County. I am honored as a board member to be associated with CHP’s legacy and work today.

Since 1975 CHP has leveraged the generosity of our supporters and government funding to provide healing to as many children, families and adults as we can reach.

This has ranged from going door to door in our hill towns checking on isolated families (sometimes living in abandoned buses) in its origin years to offering prenatal care today to expecting mothers, despite a reimbursement system that all but guarantees financial loss.

Through the blessing of MassHealth (i.e. Medicaid), CHP’s patients receive the same first-rate care as privately insured families. It has been one of the great social equalizers in our communities.

Medicaid funding, however, has many strings and conditions. Contrary to Republican talking points, Medicaid spurs a much, much more efficient way of delivering health services than private insurance. It limits its reimbursement to basic needs. You will not find a plastic surgeon on CHP’s medical staff.

CHP’s recent reductions of staff, consolidations and cuts in service are painful but necessary steps to right-size the agency in the best possible way to still meet our mission in the context of a looming financial storm ahead.

As an organization, we need to batten down our hatches and trim the sails as we persevere through coming hail and winds, while tending to our patients and your neighbors.

The skies may be darkening but CHP will continue to do everything we can to make sure our patients glory in the sunshine of human compassion and the loving care our doctors, nurses and staff have offered over the last half century.

Erik Bruun
Member of the CHP Board of Directors
Great Barrington

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