Community Health Collective

Host: Jill Steeley

EPISODE OVERVIEW

Jill takes you inside the health center she inherited in Helena, Montana - nearly a million dollars in the red, a 42% uninsured rate, 37% staff turnover, a dental clinic shuttered for years, and no new provider recruited in five. The board gave her 12 months to turn it around or they were closing the doors. This episode is the story of what actually moved the needle, and it wasn't more grants. It was a question. Jill stopped asking "how do we get more funding?" and started asking "why is our business model built to need it?" From there she walks through the four levers she now teaches in every framework - increase and diversify recurring revenue, reduce costs while increasing productivity, build market presence, and retain patients through exceptional care - and the guilt that sits underneath all of it: the belief that profit is greed and that serving the poor means staying poor. The turnaround took grant dependency from 62.5% of the budget down to 17%, grew the insured patient line 20% year after year, and put millions in reserves after a near-million-dollar deficit. And it expanded access for everyone, insured and uninsured. If you're a health center leader who's been cutting staff, services, and sites because there's nothing left to cut, this one is for you.