Community Health Association of Spokane is planning a collaborative partnership clinic with Frontier Behavioral Health, adding to a growing list of community partnerships the nonprofit health care organization has engaged in recently.

“We’re trying to be a little more strategic with our growth, and specifically with our community partners,” says John Browne, chief financial and strategy officer at CHAS Health.

The proposed CHAS-Frontier clinic project is in the early stages, and Browne expects a formal announcement to be made sometime next year. He notes, however, that the proposed clinic would be located near Frontier’s current downtown campus.

Carla Savalli, Frontier’s public information officer, declines to comment on the project.

CHAS also partnered with Volunteers of America recently with the opening of its Parkside Clinic.

“We’re essentially on what’s going to be their new Crosswalk campus,” Browne says.

The Parkside Clinic opened earlier this year at 3002 E. Mission, near Chief Garry Park. The neighboring Crosswalk youth shelter is expected to open in fall 2025, according to the Volunteers of America Eastern Washington website.

In May, CHAS built upon its partnership with Spokane Public Schools by opening school-based health centers at North Central and Shadle Park high schools.

“Those will complement our other couple with Shiloh Hills (Elementary School) and Rogers (High School),” Browne says. “We’ve got four school-based health centers now.”

CHAS is also working with Spokane Public Library and various community centers in the area to increase access to its health care services.

“Our target population that we serve—low-income, underserved, underinsured, uninsured patients—they’re accessing services at library locations, at community centers,” Browne says. “We’re just trying to be smart about adding access where our target population of patients are already going for other things.”

Additionally, a new partnership between CHAS and the city of Spokane that will help expand street medicine outreach to the local unhoused community was announced late last month.

The CHAS Health Street Medicine team provides primary care, wound care, foot care, referral coordination, and emergency services coordination. A $1 million appropriation from the Washington state Legislature will go toward expanding the team’s hours of service operations.

CHAS has had longstanding relationships with organizations in the community that serve similar populations, but creating more formal partnerships is somewhat of a new model, Browne explains.

“We’re realizing that with social determinants of health with our patients, health care is a small piece of the puzzle as far as their overall health,” Browne says. “The road to getting them better and getting healthier is much more predicated on other nonhealth care primary care services.”

He says other factors include having access to food, shelter, child care, and workforce training.

“Working together more closely with our community partners and being in the same place and making it easier for our patients to access all these different services that they need has been a big reason that we've started to partner more with them,” says Browne.

Recent growth

While community partnerships are increasing as CHAS has continued to grow in recent years, physical expansion—new standalone clinics, for example—has slowed since the onset of the pandemic, Browne says.

From about 2012 to 2020, CHAS was opening new locations more frequently than it has been recently, he says.

“We were opening a new site or two, or sometimes even three per year,” says Browne. “We were actually growing at a much faster clip.”

 Although the physical growth has slowed some, it hasn’t completely fallen off.

The nonprofit recently opened two community behavioral health clinics, one of which is located at 5901 N. Lidgerwood, on Spokane's North Side, and the other in Lewiston, Idaho.

“It’s that next level of behavioral health,” Browne says. “It’s not the intensity that Frontier provides as far as services, but it’s beyond the integrated behavioral health model.”

Earlier this year, CHAS acquired Spokane Pediatrics. The health care organization is moving that practice from its current location near Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center to a larger site near MultiCare Deaconess Hospital, Browne says.

“That will include expanded space for provider and care teams to be able to provide services to a lot more patients,” he says. “Eventually, it’ll include pharmacy services and women’s health, most likely.”

CHAS also plans to build a clinic on the west side of Airway Heights in an area that is being developed with new multifamily housing. Browne says the city of Airway Heights approached CHAS years ago about bringing services to the West Plains town.

Expansion possibilities also are being considered on the North Side, Browne adds.

“There’s a big gap in between our Maple and Market street clinics and our Deer Park Clinic,” he explains.

Browne says CHAS will try to keep up with the growth of Spokane Valley and other areas surrounding Spokane but doesn’t mention any more specific plans.

Increased demand

The increase in partnerships and continually growing number of CHAS sites comes as a result of increased demand for affordable health care, specifically affordable preventive care, Browne says.

“It is certainly the increase in demand for services, and every health system in town is feeling it,” he says. “A lot of it is pent up demand from COVID, where people weren’t accessing care and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Okay, I need to get in.’”

In 2019, before the pandemic, CHAS served about 96,000 patients. In 2020, that number dipped to roughly 90,000 patients, but it has been climbing since. The nonprofit served about 99,000 patients in 2021, 102,000 patients in 2022, and nearly 112,000 patients in 2023.

To pay for the various expansions and keep up with growing demand, CHAS receives its funding from a variety of sources, including through its own reserve funds, loans, state and federal funding, and capital campaigns.

“That’s another reason why it’s been good with these partnerships,” Browne says, noting that it’s helpful when partner organizations are able to contribute toward costs.

CHAS has about 25 locations across Spokane, Spokane Valley, Deer Park, and Cheney, as well as Clarkston, Lewiston, and Moscow, Idaho.