Harp Backs Primary Care Move

Mayor Toni Harp endorsed a plan to build a modern new $15 million primary care center on Long Wharf — and predicted that getting there will prove easier than some skeptics believe.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Harp said of the proposal by Yale-New Haven Hospital to close its three current primary care centers and consolidate them at a renovated building at 150 Sergeant Drive, to be managed by Fair Haven Community Health Care and the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center. (Click here to read a story detailing the plan.)

Around 28,500 primarily low-income patients see their doctors at the primary care center. The plan for the new center needs both state and federal regulators’ approvals.

Harp, whose day job was coordinating homeless health care at the Hill Health Center before she became mayor, said the new center will make patients lives’ easier because it will feature multiple services in one place. People will be able to get ultrasounds or X‑rays, say, or pick up prescriptions at the same place they visit their doctors, rather than have to schlep to several locations the way they do now.

“You’re going to go to one place, one-stop shopping,” Harp said during her latest appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Mayor Monday” program. ​“I think it’s a much better model.”

She also predicted that the new center will be more cost-effective, because federally qualified clinics like Fair Hven and Hill Health — which will become the managers — obtain higher reimbursements than hospitals do for treating the poor. Yale-New Haven estimates that it loses $174 per Medicaid visit because of low government reimbursements.

Harp was asked about complaints from neighbors and doctors at a recent West River neighborhood meeting that the plan would remove the center from residential neighborhoods and make it hard for people without cars to get to the doctor, especially given CT Transit’s limited and unreliable bus service. (Click here to read about that meeting.)

“It’s right down the street from the old Gateway” Community College campus, Harp noted. ​“A lot of people took buses to Gateway. The bus will get you there. Whether or not it’s quick, that’s another whole matter.”

Medicaid has a separate transportation program for its patients, she added. And the disabled have access to Greater New Haven Transit District’s My Ride service.

That said, Harp noted that her administration has been working on a state-funded study to improve the bus system, including rethinking routes. She held out hope that that would help patients get to the new primary care center more easily as well.

On the ​“Mayor Monday” episode, Harp also discussed last week’s non-encounter with President Trump, when she boycotted a White House meeting out of fears that it was a ​“set-up” to berate mayors who promote sanctuary city policies. (Click here to read a full story about that.) Harp was asked why she declined to be interviewed by national media outlets about the encounter.

“I’m responsible for New Haven, and this is not about me,” the mayor responded. ​“If I did that and went on the attack with Trump … we still need federal resources. We have a very important grant that we’re applying for as we speak that we didn’t get last year. I have to be more concerned about the people of New Haven than where I’m going to get [personal] publicity.”

“In spite in spite of the fact that I was set up,” Harp added, ​“I still have to deal with these people.”

Click on or download the above audio file or Facebook Live video below to listen to the full episode of WNHH FM’s ​“Mayor Monday,” in which she also discussed the opioid crisis, government pensions and health benefits, and the Amazon campus sweepstakes.

This episode of ​“Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.