Long Valley Health Center

Challenges

Laytonville is a beautiful small town but the closest city with a population of over 100,000 is Santa Rosa, over a hundred miles away. This location makes it difficult to recruit high skilled and degreed professionals, even aside from healthcare providers. LVHC needed a Chief Financial Officer for oversight of its accounting and finance functions, who could present and analyze financial statements for the Board, oversee the annual audit, and perform other CFO level functions but did not need a full-time position. Adding to the difficulties of recruiting a person with those qualifications to Laytonville, a part-time placement would have been difficult at best.

Solutions

Morrison assisted Long Valley’s management and Board in defining the part-time CFO role. Morrison then filled that role, and has refined its services and approach since the start of the LVHC relationship in 2014 to meet their evolving needs, also advising on strategic planning processes and human resource matters. While Morrison is onsite as needed to meet with management, the Board, and external auditors, the location makes routine visits impractical. Accordingly, Morrison makes use of technologies that connect to LVHC’s office and is in close contact with LVHC’s accounting staff and third-party medical billing providers. Morrison experienced normal staff turnover in its years of service to LVHC, quickly stepping in with other experienced Morrison consultants to avoid disruption of services.

Successes

Today, Long Valley Health Center enjoys CFO level services without having to have recruit and compensate a full-time CFO. LVHC gets what it needs: oversight of a key function, an extra set of eyes on finances, support for its internal accounting and finance functions, and collaboration with other key service providers. This allows the Clinic to do what it does best serve their community with award winning healthcare.

“The level of knowledge, skills and professionalism that Morrison brings to our team is even better than I had hoped for when searching for someone to partner with for CFO/Financial Management services. This partnership truly allows me to focus on the other important areas of clinic operation, knowing our financial management is in good hands.” Rod Grainger | Executive Director

About the client

Long Valley Health Center (LVHC) is a nonprofit independent Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) located in rural Laytonville, California. Its mission is to improve the quality of life in its service area by providing high quality health care services to the surrounding communities. LVHC’s services include primary medical, dental, mental health, and other healthcare services. In recent years, they have received the Health and Human Services (HHS), Health Resources & Services Administration’s (HRSA) recognition for advances in providing care with a Quality Improvement Award, given to the highest performing health centers nationwide. In 2019, LVHC was the only health center in their region to receive the “Value Enhancer” award for health centers improving the delivery of cost-efficient care while also increasing both the quality of and access to care.