Thundermist Health Center doesn’t look like a typical
health clinic. It feels like a small health system. In
addition to its primary care services, this federally
qualified health center (FQHC) offers substance use
disorder treatment, HIV care through the Ryan White
HIV/AIDS Program, a dental practice, mobile medical
units, and clinics embedded directly inside local high
schools, among other services. The organization has
been a Rhode Island institution for more than 50 years.
Its primary locations in the state are in Woonsocket,
West Warwick, and Wakefield.
RXinsider spoke with Jeffrey Gaines, MD, MHCM,
FACEP, chief medical officer, and Christopher Durigan,
PharmD, director of clinical pharmacy services, about
what it takes to run a sustainable healthcare organization
built around removing barriers to care. The conversation
covered how Thundermist’s FQHC status shapes its
work with underserved patients, why the 340B Drug
Pricing Program is central to keeping care affordable,
how pharmacy is integrated into clinical decision-
making, and the funding pressures Gaines and Durigan
expect to define the next several years for community
health centers nationwide.
Q. To set the stage, tell us about some
notable patient care services that
Thundermist offers across its locations.
Gaines: When I first started here, I thought I knew a lot
about Thundermist. But the core of what I knew was
based primarily on primary care (family practice, some
internal medicine and pediatrics, and a lot of obstetrics
and gynecology). Then I learned we actually have a
really robust dental practice, which, coming from my
perspective as an emergency room physician, is huge. We
also have convenient care with walk-in access, and that’s
not just for Thundermist patients. We offer it 7 days a
week to anyone in the community. We do a lot of HIV
care, too. We also work closely with the Women, Infants,
and Children (WIC) program and other government
agencies to help connect patients with resources. It’s a
big organization, yet it’s small enough that there isn’t
much red tape or bureaucracy. We can be really nimble.
Durigan: That’s been a theme for me, too. Thundermist
is a sizable organization, but it’s not like some places
where the CEO is a distant figure you never see. During
COVID-19, for example, we thought, “What if we
just set up our own testing site?” So we set it up in the
parking lot, and people came from across the state. We
also set up an infusion clinic to treat COVID, which we’d
never done before. Our ideas end up becoming reality
because, like [Gaines] said, there’s no red tape in the
way. If we have enough people to staff a project, we’ll
just do it. You’ll see this theme come up again and again.
Inside Thundermist
How This
FQHC Delivers
Comprehensive,
Community-
Rooted Care
Written by Joshua Murdock, PharmD, BCBBS
If you walk around Rhode Island and run
into 17 people, one of them is going to be a
Thundermist patient. It’s a big swath of the
population in this state.”
— Jeffrey Gaines, MD, MHCM, FACEP
This transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity. A copy of the full
transcript is available upon request; contact RXinsider for more information.
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