NEOAHEC'S HISTORY
Oregon AHECs began
as a grassroots effort by rural physicians. The
foundation was laid for the development of an AHEC when
Dr. Lowell Euhus and Dr. Scott Siebe of Enterprise met
with State Senator Mike Thorne in 1988. They requested
help with the "crisis in rural healthcare." As
rural doctors, they were exhausted because there were not
enough physicians to cover for them. Additionally, they
felt this was a problem in other rural areas of the
state. After the meeting with Senator Thorne, they
developed and mailed a questionnaire to rural physicians
throughout Oregon. The responses showed that almost 50%
of rural physicians did not plan on practicing in their
rural community in the next five years!
Therefore, Dr. Euhus and Dr. Siebe held a symposium in
Joseph, Oregon to discuss the findings of the survey.
Attending the symposium were rural physicians,
legislators, Oregon Health Sciences University Educators
and others interested in rural health. As a result of
this meeting, legislators agreed to assure passage of
proposals which would help rural health care across the
state.
Chuck Hofmann, MD Baker City chaired an Oregon Medical
Association Rural Health Subcommittee which included
rural physicians and Dr. Dutch Reinschmidt of OHSU. The
committee developed legislation aimed at enhancing rural
health care and supporting rural care providers. Those
pieces of legislation provided for a rural primary care
provider tax credit, a rural loan repayment program,
initial funding for the AHECs, and moving the Office of
Rural Health to OHSU. Mike Thorne, Gene Timmes and other
rural legislators assured the passage of the legislation
in the 1989 legislative session.
Once AHEC state funding was secured, Dr. Dutch
Reinschmidt of OHSU and Dave Johnson of the University of
Washington School of medicine wrote a proposal for AHEC
federal funding and successfully obtained the funding to
start AHECs in Oregon. Dick Grant was hired as the first
Deputy Director for the program and, in cooperation with
Dutch and others at OHSU, began creating Oregon's first
AHEC center in the northeast corner of the state.
The grant was awarded and funding began in October, 1990.
The first half of the program year was spent setting up
the program office, advisory committees and implementing
the first regional AHEC in Oregon - that AHEC became
known as Northeast Oregon AHEC (NEOAHEC).
NEOAHEC had its first meeting as an incorporated board in
April, 1991. They quickly moved ahead to selection of an
Executive Director at their June 12, 1991 board meeting.
Sandy Ryman, as the new director, worked jointly with
OHSU and the people in the region to establish the
initial residency and medical student preceptor sites and
to begin needs assessments.
The initial assessments showed the need for focusing on
EMT education. Then the board began to collect additional
data to determine future service priorities for
professionals in the region. A significant and visionary
decision was made to develop infrastructure in the region
to aid in future educational delivery. NEOAHEC partnered
with the eight hospitals in the region to establish
ED-NET I satellite receive sites.
During the third year of the program, NEOAHEC pooled
resources with Eastern Oregon State College and the Rodeo
Net project (through Eastern Oregon Human Services
Consortium) to fund a NET I broadcast site on the Eastern
campus.
The board also began to focus on long term funding
strategies and to develop goals for funding beyond the
end of October, 1996. Additionally, they developed
marketing plans and further defined their
"customers" throughout the region.
In budget year 1994-95, the board reevaluated
organizational process and developed a more concise
tagline for the mission: "Education for
Health." Realizing they could not be all things to
all people, they also began to narrow their customer
focus and began in earnest the process of resource
development.
June, 1995 was a significant meeting of the NEOAHEC
board. At that meeting, they refined their goals and
determined how to allocate program funding across the
three work areas of: rural education and training;
continuing education; and health careers education. From
this dialogue came NEOAHEC's long term
"pipeline" vision.
The last year of federal funding was during 95-96. During
that year, the organization developed benchmarks for each
of the strategies used in achieving organizational goals.
The benchmarks continue to be measured and provide the
organization with a way to chart its progress.
Since that time the organization has continued to grow
and hs been very successful in its transition to a base
level of state funding. NEOAHEC has used the state
funding as seed money to more than double the budget
level of base funding. Other sources of revenue for
program delivery are from grant writing, contracts and
delivery of "fee services."
Thus, NEOAHEC has created a strong foundation for
continued delivery of services to meet the needs of
northeast Oregon communities and health care providers.
