THE PRIMARY CARE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION RECEIVES $750,000 FROM THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL TO REDUCE THE EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS GAP FOR PRIMARY HEALTH CARE CENTERS

New York, NY, July 1, 2005—The Primary Care Development Corporation (PCDC) has received $750,000 from the New York City Council to conduct an emergency preparedness initiative for 20 primary care centers throughout all five boroughs of New York City. This funding is part of the $50 billion budget that the City Council approved for 2006.

This funding is a major victory for primary care centers and will go far to making New York City more prepared for an emergency. Although not first responders, primary care centers are the frontline source of health care, information, and support services in their communities. In the event of a bioterrorist attack, disease outbreak, or other more common hazards, primary care centers must be ready to identify and contain outbreaks, triage and refer patients, provide non-urgent health care when emergency rooms are filled, offer culturally relevant information in the languages their community members speak, and mental health services.

Currently, most primary care centers have little to no capacity or infrastructure in place to address emergency preparedness and, unlike most hospitals and public health agencies, there have been no other local and organized efforts to address this need. “We built a program and proved that it works,” said Ronda Kotelchuck, Executive Director of PCDC. “We are thrilled to be able to roll it out and ensure that these 20 sites are prepared for whatever emergencies might occur in their communities.”

PCDC developed and piloted this program under contract with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. During the 16 months of the program, PCDC developed the first set of standards for risk analysis, emergency response, coordination, communications, clinical preparedness and training, supply and equipment specifically for primary care centers. PCDC used the standards to assess a cross-section of 12 different types of primary care sites across the City to determine their level of preparedness and then designed a program for responding to all types of emergencies. They piloted the program at four primary care sites and achieved highly compelling results: the emergency preparedness capacity at those sites improved by 25% to 72%.