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Company
History
Klamath County’s first Federally Qualified Health Center
(FQHC) grant was awarded to the Southern Oregon Regional Health
Network (SORHN). SORHN opened a health center in Chiloquin in
1988. The Klamath County Health Department obtained an FQHC
grant after SORHN dissolved in 1995. The County’s Health
Department used the grant to operate health clinics in Klamath
Falls, Chiloquin, and Bly. Soon afterward, however, federal
funding was withdrawn once again, so a committee formed to create
a new FQHC.
Three healthcare professionals with longstanding commitments
to providing access to preventive and primary care to the
underserved – Claude Bergeron, Barbara Bergeron, and
Dr. James Calvert – together wrote a grant application
to the U.S. Public Health Service to establish in Klamath
Falls a community health center. Their application was funded
and Klamath Health Partnership (KHP), a private not for profit
corporation, operating as Klamath Open Door Family Practice
Clinic, was born in 1997.
Klamath Open Door’s first home was in an abandoned
warehouse, remodeled with additional grant funding. Among
the health center’s first family practice physicians
were graduates of Klamath Falls’ Cascades East Family
Practice Residency Program.
Klamath Health Partnership’s provider team of 4 dentists,
2 dental hygienists, 6 family practice physicians, 3 physician
assistants, and 2 nurse practitioners, along with many capable
staff, offer Klamath residents access to culturally appropriate,
high quality, and affordable primary and preventive healthcare
from clinics in Klamath Falls, Bly, and Chiloquin.
History
of Community Health Centers
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