As it commemorates its 10 year anniversary this month, CEC Health Care has continued to stay true to its mission: To provide high quality and comprehensive healthcare to the underserved community.
Formerly known as the Charles Evans Center, CEC Health Care began with a focus on serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and determined early on that the best way to meet their needs was to become a Federally Qualified Health Center.
“A Federally Qualified Health Center is the ideal model for serving people with special needs because we co-locate a wide range of services under one roof, and that it enables people who have historically fallen through the cracks of the healthcare system to easily access a wide range of services without having to travel to varied, different locations,” says Dr. James R. Dolan, Jr., CEO of the nonprofit organization.
Beginning in Bethpage in 2015, CEC Health Care added a Hauppauge location in 2017 that also targets people with developmental disabilities.
In December 2019, CEC further expanded its scope to include another category of historically underserved patients: people with mental illness and people with substance use disorders, by merging the former Melillo Center for Mental Health in Glen Cove into CEC Health Care. They opened their fourth center in Seaford in 2024.
The Glen Cove location is the only program in New York State that colocates all three Articles of public health at one site: Article 28 (New York State Department of Health-licensed program delivering medical and dental care), Article 31 (New York State Office of Mental Health-licensed clinic delivering mental health care) and Article 32 (New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports-licensed clinic providing behavioral health services for people with substance use disorders).
INTEGRATIVE CARE: TREATING THE WHOLE PATIENT
Delivering integrated care is what makes the CEC Health Care unique, notes Dolan.
“I don’t think there’s anyone else in NYS, certainly not on Long Island, that integrates care in the way we do by providing medical services, dental and the full spectrum of behavioral healthcare at a single location,” Dolan says.
CEC Health Care delivers high quality care by treating the patient as a whole, notes Dr. Christine Brown, Chief Medical Officer for the organization.
“That’s where this integrative care comes in,” says Brown. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We try to pull in services that we know will meet that need.”
Services at the CEC Health Care include primary care, women’s health, neurology, podiatry, dermatology, dentistry, behavioral health (verbal therapy services and psychiatry), as well as psychology, where cognitive testing is done for many patients who are undergoing testing for diagnosis of a development disability.
Clients can access any and all of the services at one of the facilities. If patients need a service that’s available at another site, CEC Health Care will make internal referrals.
“This is very helpful in terms of one-stop shopping for our patients,” says Brown.
FULL SPECTRUM OF MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
In addition to the health centers, CEC Health Care has a very large mental health residential program in Nassau and Suffolk counties with 200 beds.
“We provide for the full spectrum of mental health housing services,” says Dolan of the three tiers of services: supportive housing, which is largely independent housing where support is provided as needed; apartment treatment housing, which offers a greater level of care, and community residence housing, where there is 24/7 staffing.
CEC Health Care’s ACT Team: Assertive Community Treatment is a mobile mental health clinic that brings the clinical services to the patient wherever they are.
They also have an Outreach, Assessment and Referral division where mental health professionals in the community go to shelters, soup kitchens, libraries, and senior and veterans’ centers to find people who would otherwise fall through the cracks of the health care system.
“We are finding these individuals and connecting them to services,” says Dolan, adding that their health home care management program provides wraparound services where a caseworker helps identify an individual’s needs and works to get them connected to services.
Recently, CEC Health Care began working with the criminal justice probation department.
“There is an intersection between mental health and the criminal justice system where oftentimes there’s a breakdown. That occurs due to the lack of coordination between the two systems, but I believe we’re ahead of the curve in terms of trying to address that issue,” says Dolan, noting that part of their supportive housing program includes specialized housing for people with a criminal justice background.
ACCESS IS KEY
Bringing care to people who are underserved is exemplified in CEC Health Care’s purchase of telemedicine equipment that enables them to bring services — both behavioral health and medical care — to people wherever they are.
“For many of these patients that have difficulty accessing care, if they can’t reach our offices, then our goal is to reach them – to still make the connection,” says Brown.
Utilizing Medpod tele-diagnostic equipment allows for a technician to go out into the field to meet patients in their homes, where they can assess vital signs, and do heart, lung, eye, ear and skin exams.
“So, we’re putting things in place to not only help folks that are making it to our office, but to meet those patients where they’re at as well,” Brown says.
AND FOR THE NEXT DECADE
In the next few years, CEC Health Care will continue to provide more outreach and telemedicine services, as well as housing for people with mental health issues.
“Going forward the definition of healthcare delivery is expanding to include not only the provision of clinical services but also the assurance that the person who needs care is receiving what we refer to as ‘the social determinants’ of health,” Dolan says.
Those social determinants include stable housing and access to high quality food and transportation.
“We tend to be focused on secondary prevention, but we can make a greater impact, even nationally, on healthcare and health and wellness if the focus is put on primary prevention,” adds Brown.
PARTNER CONTENT
