Often, they just don't know that there is a community health center closer to them. We had a strong plan for our site development. We spoke with a number of 330 grantees and looked at the communities from which our patients were coming. We really have tried not to duplicate what is already out there while we strive to meet the needs of the community. Tim Long, MD, at Near North Health Service Corporation, for example, is a long-time friend who trained here at County.
Informal conversations are usually how our partnerships have begun.
A lot of it is just knowing the people within the system, and because a number of us have worked at community health centers, we have that foundation already built at a number of the health centers. There are some new things happening in terms of partnerships that we are really excited about. For instance, a contract was just approved for 1.5 FTE physicians and midlevel providers for the new Friend Family Health Center West site. In this instance, they actually came to us. Their medical director is a close friend of two family physicians who had left CHCs to come work at the County.