AURORA | The Metro Community Provider Network, a nonprofit healthcare group that offers an array of services to a large swath of the city’s indigent population, is vying to expand one of its north Aurora care facilities in the coming years in an effort to serve as many as 5,000 more patients per year.
The Network, often referred to as MCPN, is tentatively planning on adding about 20 new patient exam rooms in 10,600 square feet of additional space at its North Aurora Family Health Services Center at 3292 Peoria Street, according to John Reid, vice president of fund development for MCPN.
The addition would bring the total size of the facility, which grants primary care to about 40 percent of all MCPN patients, to about 43,000 square feet. Last year, MCPN provided medical care to nearly 22,500 Aurora residents at eight different health centers across the city. Founded in 1989, the group has some form of operation in more than two dozen facilities across Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas Jefferson and Park Counties. With a focus on the suburbs, MCPN does not often serve uninsured Denver residents, although the group will accept Medicaid recipients from Aurora’s neighbor to the west.
But in order to shore up the plans for the expanded north Aurora center, MCPN must first secure the necessary funding. A large piece of the financial puzzle is already accounted for, however, thanks to a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services MCPN nabbed last April. Although, the grant will remain largely unused until the group is able to secure matching funds from a hodgepodge of outside groups.
Reid said MCPN is in the process of stitching together that patchwork of other grants to finance the remaining $1.6 million the group needs to construct the new addition. The organization has already received $75,000 from the Caring for Colorado Foundation and $80,000 from its own board of directors. It has hefty potential gifts coming from the Colorado Health Foundation, the Anschutz Family Foundation and several other possible entities.
Last Tuesday, the group formally asked the city for a $200,000 grant to help fund the project. The city’s Management and Finance Committee recommended that the full city council discuss the project at a study session in August.
“I do understand the need that MCPN has,” said City Council Member Brad Pierce, who serves as chairman of the Management and Finance Committee. “They’re having to serve more people in their services, so I do think there’s a definite need for their expansion … I just can’t predict what council will do.”
Reid said MCPN is feverishly working to solidify the funding mechanisms for the expansion project before any seismic shifts impact the nation’s healthcare system.
“The sense of urgency really revolves around us trying to bring that resource to the Aurora community before there is any potential for changes in terms of how the current Affordable (Care) Act is structured,” he said.
Reid said the $1 million grant from the federal government expires in April 2019. As of now, MCPN is planning on breaking ground on the expansion early next year and finishing up sometime in the first two months of 2019.
If approved by city council, the requested $200,000 would likely come from the city’s capital projects fund, which is largely composed of general fund money that has been tabbed for the projects pot, according to Terri Velasquez, the city’s finance director. In 2017, Aurora’s capital improvements funds totaled $153.6 million, according to Velasquez. The city’s total budget for the year originally topped out at about $703.1 million.
Despite expressing optimism about his colleague’s appetite for an additional $200,000 request, Pierce alluded to a looming budget shortfall in 2018 as a cause for concern in fulfilling MCPN’s appeal for more money.
“We’re facing a deficit, anyway, in 2018,” he said. “… I’m open to (funding the request), but with this being only May, we have five to six more months to go before budget time comes, so we’ll have more information about our revenue and that type of thing.”
Aurora City Council begins the process of balancing the city’s budget through a hearing process in September.