Plainfield Health Center in trouble?

Is the Plainfield Health Center in trouble?

The gist of some Trenton gossip PT heard over the weekend is that PHC is in fiscal straits and has been looking to the state for financial assistance.

This is doubly troubling: PHC is a key component of health care delivery for underserved and economically challenged area residents; and the State is broke.

PHC has gone through a number of changes since its founding director, Julane Miller-Armbrister, retired several years ago. (12:30 pm: PT stands corrected: the founding director was Oliver Bartlett; Miller-Armbrister was the second.)

There has been a revolving door of executive leadership, along with an aggressive expansion into other service areas including Phillipsburg, Elizabethport and the state's northwest corner.

At the same time, eyebrows have been raised over the organization's administrative topheaviness as well as the abandonment of a professionally-driven endowment effort.

The state, PT hears, is loath to consider taking over the agency and instead would prefer finding partners to throw a rescue line if the PHC cannot make it on its own.

Muhlenberg, which has its plate full, may not be able to help more than it already has.

Which would mean other health care organizations who, no doubt, would kick the tires and check under the hood before making a commitment.

Rumors that the PHC could get some temporary relief by selling off a portion of its property behind the Comcast facility are also circulating.

Comcast, PT is told, is NOT interested in the property.

Talk of condos or upscale stand-alone housing which circulated in the early days of the Robinson-Briggs tenure has abated -- no doubt partly because of the softness of the residential development market and also the possibility of Superfund issues on the property.

Would the PMUA be interested? Maybe. But taxpayers should be alarmed if a sweetheart deal is brought forward.

The way to go would be for the PHC to put the proposed land on the market and see who nibbles. That way, the public would get to see what the PHC thinks it is worth -- and whether anyone else sees it that way.

Meanwhile, perhaps the Assemblyman, who has been curiously silent, can do some rainmaking the same way he did for Muhlenberg.

Tens of thousands of clients' health care is at stake.

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You can check out the PHC website, but don't expect much enlightenment. The welcoming message seems not to have been updated since the site was put up in 2002. The development pages are frozen in time with 2006 activities. The most recent press release on the press page is April 16, 2006. Clicking on the 'Newsletter' link brings up a PDF file of the Spring 2005 issue -- is that the most recent? And when you click on the 'Site Map' link -- a user-friendly way to navigate -- you get the following

-- Dan Damon

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