After a ribbon cutting ceremony last Monday morning, Dr. Robyn Riseberg quickly began seeing patients. Her new South End medical practice, Boston Community Pediatrics (BCP), was open for business.
Aimed at serving low-income children and families, the 527 Albany Street facility is the first nonprofit private pediatric practice in the state. Though her nonprofit is designed for children’s medicine, Riseberg said she will also focus on issues that affect entire families, like housing and mental health.
Already, one of Riseberg’s patients, who is being evicted, called her to ask for help with moving expenses. With financial support from some deep pocketed donors, Riseberg said her practice has set up a fund to help such families with emergency needs.
“I
believe that you can’t treat kids in a vacuum,” she said. “It’s also
about the family, so we’ll be helping the parents navigate these complex
systems.”
So far, BCP has raised over $900,000 from individual
and institutional donors, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Red Sox
Foundation, and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Families with
MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid insurance, often have difficulty
getting care from private pediatricians because doctors receive smaller
reimbursements from MassHealth than from private insurance companies.
Instead, families often
forego preventative treatments and turn to large hospitals that offer
less personalized care. Low-income children are three times more likely
to have an unmet health need than wealthier children, according to
Riseberg.
With support from its donors, BCP hopes to avoid the bottom line issues other practices face and serve many MassHealth patients.
Situated
close to several affordable housing developments, Riseberg plans to
eventually open on some weeknights and Saturdays to make it easier for
parents to book appointments around their work schedules.
“The South
End has the highest percentage of affordable housing units in the city
of Boston, even though most people think of it as a gentrified place,”
she said. “It is certainly a place of great need.”
Having spent more than a decade working with children, Riseberg
says the inflexibility of large institutions and the need for
personalized healthcare motivated her to start her own practice. She
previously worked as head of pediatrics at the South End Community
Health Center.
“I realized that with all of the bureaucracy in large
institutions, it can be hard to sustain all the programs that are
necessary to give the absolute best care to [underserved] patients,”
Riseberg said. New programs can take years to be approved and require
long wait times to make changes. At BCP, Riseberg hopes to make
corrections and improvements quickly.
On Monday afternoon, she was hurrying to a meeting with staff at her office.
“We’re
going to talk about what worked well today and what didn’t, and
whatever didn’t we’re going to change tomorrow,” she said.
