Plainfield Health Center: Layoffs sign of fiscal woes?

Troubling rumors have been swirling for months that the Plainfield Health Center (now referred to as PNHSC -- the Plainfield Neighborhood Health Services Corporation) was in financial straits and that layoffs were imminent.

The shoe was primed to drop yesterday, but workers appear to have gotten a reprieve until perhaps Friday. I got word late last evening that 12 staff members will be laid off shortly.

This cannot be good news for an agency that is an essential piece of the health care safety net for low-income and uninsured patients. The agency's mission, found on its website, says --

Plainfield Neighborhood Health Services Corporation mission is to provide high quality oriented and cost-effective primary health care services in a safe and accessible environment for the residents of our primary service areas and the residents of central New Jersey. The Plainfield Neighborhood Health Services Corporation is especially dedicated to providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services and consistent, high quality primary healthcare services to the medically needy and indigent population of these communities.

With 24,489 patients served in 2006 -- two thirds of them from 'the Plainfields' -- and a trend toward ever greater use of the Center by the area's Hispanic population, needs and finances appear to be on a collision course.

I pointed out way back in March, 2007, that there was gossip in Trenton circles of the difficulties and that eyebrows were raised about administrative topheaviness and the abandonment of a professionally-driven endowment effort.

Let's face it: Reimbursements by government programs will never be able to cover the ever-rising cost of providing services. Organizations that do not CONSTANTLY scratch the ground for grants, endowments and sponsors willing to open their checkbooks wide cannot keep their heads above water forever.

The Center was praised for receiving a $48,000 grant from the Horizon Foundation of New Jersey in July. This appeared to be good news, until digging into the stats a little bit. The Foundation made a grant of $2.2M to 16 agencies. Do the math: the average would be $137,000. Not a good sign.

Not only are the layoffs an indicator of fiscal straits at the Plainfield location, questions now arise about the viability of PNHSC's outlying operations in Elizabethport, Phillipsburg and Newton, in addition to its offsite locations at Plainfield High School and Washington Community School.

And Muhlenberg is in no condition to be of much help.

So, is a merger in the Health Center's future?

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Plainfield Today (3/19/2007): "Plainfield Health Center in trouble?"
Website: "Plainfield Health Center"

-- Dan Damon

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