Stanislaus County's Health Services Agency is looking at ways to serve more people more comfortably.

County supervisors this week took a step toward helping the agency care for more patients closer to their homes, giving the agency permission to spend $150,000 to hire a functional space planner. The consultant will help the agency decide how to expand its clinic services in Modesto and throughout the county.

Officials expect the planner to look at the Turlock clinic to determine if projected population growth in that area warrants a clinic expansion.

Also to be examined are Salida, west Modesto and the Airport Neighborhood. The consultant will determine whether, in years to come, the number of patients in these communities would warrant the cost of establishing full-service clinics.

Within Modesto, the planner will look at the limitations of the 1930's-era Scenic Drive facility and make recommendations.

"This is about giving everyone the best care we can provide," said Kathy Kohrman, an associate director with the Health Services Agency.

The Health Services Agency provides care to Stanislaus County residents with private insurance plans as well as to those who rely on MediCal or other government programs to cover health costs.

Patients go to the agency's Scenic Drive offices for everything from annual physicals to care from specialists like orthopedists and urologists. The agency also runs an urgent care center at the site.

In 1996, the agency -- following the example of private medical groups throughout the nation -- set up clinics in outlying areas of Stanislaus County. Patients in Empire and Hughson, for example, no longer need to travel to Modesto to see a Health Services Agency doctor.

There are now nine offices throughout the county providing different levels of care. Two are in Modesto. The agency's Mom Mobile is based in the Airport Neighborhood. Women's health services are available in Salida.

Clinics are in Empire, Hughson, Ceres, Turlock and Oakdale.

"We followed the population growth," Kohrman said.

They also attempted to accommodate an ever-growing number of patients. In fiscal year 1997- 98, about 206,000 patients used services at the agency's clinics and the Scenic Drive center. The following year, 239,000 patients were seen.

County officials have more than numbers in mind as they look at clinic expansions. The idea, county CEO Reagan Wilson said, is to create a sense of community in neighborhoods outside downtown Modesto.

The county already has done this in Empire, where the clinic shares space with a county library and the Women, Infants and Children program. In Hughson, a food bank and pharmacy are near the clinic.

"We want them to be neighborhood centers," Wilson said.

In addition to examining the agency's clinics, the consultant will look at the Scenic Drive building -- the former Stanislaus Medical Center -- and tell officials whether it's feasible to update the building to better accommodate patients and modern technology.

If the process to improve the building is too involved, however, it's possible the county will sell it and move the agency's main offices to another part of the city.

"Eventually we may look at putting a for-sale sign up there," Wilson said.

At the Scenic Drive building, the consultant will tour the urgent care center, in the former county hospital emergency room. Here, doctors don't examine urgent care patients in private rooms as they do at other urgent care centers. Instead, Kohrman said, exams take place in what was the old emergency room behind privacy curtains.

The Scenic Drive building was constructed long before computers were part of the medical scene. Today, they sit behind nearly every counter in medical buildings across the nation. But some offices at the Scenic Drive site have no room for computers. Employees run down the hall to register patients at a central computer.

While efficient use of employee time is important, officials said, it is not as important as giving patients what they need. That means up-to-date medical care closer to home, Kohrman said.

"It's a customer expectation," she said. "It's good business sense to meet the needs of your patients in that way."

Reprinted by permission of Modesto Bee.