HealthLeaders 20 honoree Nann Worel works in an area that hosts film festivals and the Winter Olympics, but her part of Utah still has uninsured and medically underserved patients who need to be treated.
This profile was published in the December, 2013 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.
Park City, Utah, is a playground for movers and shakers. It is home to popular ski resorts that hosted events during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Each year its hosts the Sundance Film Festival, which attracts celebrities from around the globe and swells the population of about 8,000.
It is not the type of place where you would expect to need, much less find, a health clinic dedicated to the uninsured.
Nann Worel, executive director of the People's Health Clinic, is very familiar with that thinking. She notes that the workforce that supports the area's tourism industry—the gardeners, restaurant staff, maids, resort workers, musicians, and artists—are often among the uninsured.
She adds that with the economic downturn, sales managers, real estate agents, and other white collar residents have lost their jobs and healthcare benefits.
Last year there were about 9,500 patient visits to the clinic.
The People's Health Clinic was founded 13 years ago to serve the residents of Summit and Wasatch counties where the uninsured rate is 16% and 21%, respectively. The clinic began as a mobile service that set up shop in area parking lots. It eventually graduated to rental space and in December 2009 found a permanent home in a building it shares with the Summit County Health Department.
Worel has spent six years with the clinic but she has devoted much of her professional life to public health issues, especially access to and care for the medically underserved. "It gets in your blood," she says. "You have to have a passion for it and it is my passion."
After earning a graduate degree in hospital administration from UCLA, she was recruited for a one-year appointment at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the Jefferson County Health Department. A Seattle native, Worel had never been to the South and decided to make the temporary move. But she met her future husband in Alabama and the one year stretched into more than 20.
Along the way they moved to the coastal city of Mobile where Worel was instrumental in the creation of Victory Health Partners, which provides primary care services to uninsured adults in the area. The idea for the clinic developed during a fireside chat among a group of medical and dental professionals on a 10-day mission trip to Venezuela. Worel remembers that the group began talking about the medical needs of the poor and uninsured back home in Alabama. "Once we looked into the needs, we realized there was a huge population with little access to care."
Worel and her friends rolled up their sleeves and Victory Health Partners opened its doors in 2003. Worel spent several years with the clinic, including time as the development director. Last year VHP treated almost 13,000 patients.
The move to Park City was meant to be something of a trial retirement for Worel and her attorney husband, who soon decided that he was too young to retire. Worel began as a volunteer at the People's Clinic. By 2008 she was the development director and a year later she was named executive director.
Today Worel manages an annual budget of $1.2 million, including $600,000 in in-kind donations. She oversees 35 volunteer medical providers, including physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners. Two paid, part-time physicians help make sure important things like patient lab work don't fall through the cracks and the clinic's chronically ill patients get ongoing care they need.
The clinic also works closely with Intermountain Healthcare, which has 22 hospitals throughout Utah.
The clinic focus is primary care, although naturopathic physicians, chiropractors, homeopathic psychologists, licensed social workers, mental health counselors, acupuncturists, and physical therapists who volunteer at the clinic are available to the patients.
The People's Health Clinic requires appointments and patients are asked to contribute $20. Worel says it's important for patients to have some skin in the game. "I think people tend to comply better with medical advice if they pay a bit to help the medical care happen."
In recent years Worel has expanded to the national stage her advocacy for the medically underserved. She serves on the board of National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics for and is now the board chair. In addition to increasing the profile of clinics among elected representatives, the NAFC sponsors monthly webinars and maintains discussion boards for sharing ideas and best practices to improve patient care.
That's an important connection as Worel and the board of the People's Health Clinic explore their options to open the clinic beyond its current Tuesday through Thursday schedule. "The demand is there but we have to look at expansion from a budgetary standpoint," says Worel. "But if you don't feel good, Thursday to Tuesday is a long time to wait."
Margaret Dick Tocknell is a reporter/editor with HealthLeaders Media.
