JFSA expands its services to include primary health care with Alyson's Place

For almost 140 years, Jewish Family Service Association of Cleveland has worked to strengthen families and build communities through an array of professional behavioral and health programs. The services have helped elderly adults live independently, individuals overcome adversity, connect people with disabilities to their communities and give students a chance to fulfill their educational dreams. Now, the private, nonprofit group has expanded its scope to offer primary health care.
Alyson’s Place, JFSA’s on-site medical clinic, opened its doors last December, and offers clients direct access to cost-effective health care. Located in The Drost Family Center in Beachwood, the facility is staffed by two primary care physicians and an advanced physician’s assistant. Clients have access to various services including lab tests, well patient visits and immunizations.
“We already were providing medical care in many ways,” says Susan Bichsel, CEO and president of JFSA. “We’d already been in the home care business 20 years when we started doing this.
“We had nursing services in the field, and we had a medical director on staff. We had nurses providing nursing care to our psychiatric patients. It was a natural extension, and it made a lot of sense.”
One of the benefits of having a medical clinic on-site is the physicians’ ability to identify other social, behavioral or cognitive needs clients may have and easily connect them with other JFSA services.
Nata Mendlovic is the COO of Alyson’s Place, which partners with University Hospitals. It uses the concept of integrated or comprehensive care, which focuses on the coordination of general and behavioral services.
It also helps eliminate much of the unnecessary traveling to different specialty doctors that many patients endure. Integrated care also drives down the needless expenditures in the health care system.
“I think that what the health care industry has said very clearly is that it has to move to a place where primary care and prevention are the focus,” Bichsel says. “It all starts there. Things have to be coordinated. Yet, we are still a system that puts all the value and reimbursement dollars in the specialty areas so primary care is still fairly underfunded.”
A continuation of JFSA’s mission
Alyson’s Place is another initiative created by JFSA, whose traditional Jewish values of social justice and communal responsibility have helped it rank as one of Cleveland’s Top Work Places this past year.
But besides the medical clinic, the agency has four other major divisions, the largest of which is Ascentia: Pathways to Community Living, which provides services to individuals with disabilities. JFSA operates 62 residential sites in three Northeast Ohio counties and offers a full-range of mental health services to its clients.
“The other most significant aspect of JFSA is our service to older adults (JFSA Care at Home),” Bichsel says. “We serve about 2,500 older adults each year, 1,000 of which happen to be Holocaust survivors. Our goal is to help them stay in their homes and not have to go into long-term care if possible. We have a fairly large home care division within the agency that provides quite a few skilled nursing services in the home.”
The agency also runs a program called Families at Risk for those experiencing domestic violence, economic hardships and homelessness. Finally, JFSA’s College Financial Aid Program, which offers grants, scholarships and loans for higher education learning, has distributed more than $1 million a year to students.
Building relationships
From volunteers to local businesses, JFSA prides itself on building relationships throughout Northeast Ohio.
“Our most active group of volunteers is around our home-delivered meals program,” Bichsel says. “This program runs throughout the year, and those volunteers are committed throughout the week.”
JFSA, which has an operating budget of about $26 million, has about 700 part-time staff and PRN staff, the equivalent of 650 full-time workers. About 80 percent of its operating revenues come from government sources (Medicare and Medicaid), with the balance coming from United Way, the Jewish Community Federation, philanthropic sources, private pay clients and government grants.
“We’ve been here for almost 140 years, so our relationships tend to run fairly deep. We have formed niche relationships with different businesses and around different populations or groups of people,” Bichsel says.
For instance, Dave’s Markets help Holocaust survivors by providing gift cards for groceries around the Jewish holidays. Also, an area law firm helps Holocaust survivors fill out forms required by the German government.
“On the other side, we have a need for individuals to be mentors for some of our folks who are looking for work,” Bichsel says. “We will reach out to people who are employed and ask them to be mentors to our people who are looking for work.”
Overcoming challenges
Like most nonprofit agencies, JFSA faces some challenges.
“Our most significant challenge is that often folks don’t know we’re here,” Bichsel says. “I think we get very busy just doing our work and so maybe people don’t know about us until they need us. We’re often beholden to the funding streams that are available to us, and that doesn’t always line up to the needs a client has. We especially see that with the elderly. The elderly have a lot of needs for support in the home but that is not what Medicare pays for.”
With Alyson’s Place, the challenges may be newer but just as valid. Besides having to deal with health care rules and regulations, JFSA just wants to make sure the public is aware of all its services.
“Not everyone knows about our existence until they need us,” Mendlovic says. “One of our goals is for people to be more aware of all the services we provide.”
How to reach: Jewish Family Service Association of Cleveland, (216) 292-3999 or www.jfsa-cleveland.org