Downtown Tucson’s historic Manning House is now operating as headquarters for Arizona’s largest community health center.
The 109-year-old building, named for former Tucson Mayor Levi Manning, sits on slightly more than five acres that were acquired by the nonprofit El Rio Community Health Center in 2013.
All told, El Rio is investing $11.1 million into the property (including the $2.36 million purchase price), refurbishing costs and the cost of constructing a second building on the property, a three-story office tower currently known as “Manning 2.”
El Rio has about 1,100 employees, and by the end of March, about 240 of them are expected to be working out of one of the Manning House buildings, El Rio’s chief executive officer, Nancy Johnson, said.
Johnson was one of the first El Rio employees to move into its new location on Jan. 29, and others will be gradually moving in over the next few months.
Organization leaders hope the move downtown will give El Rio a greater presence downtown, help boost downtown’s revitalization, and also foster employee wellness.
Officials have already put loaner bikes at Manning House for employees to use when they go between downtown headquarters and El Rio’s Congress Street site, at 839 W. Congress St.
As a sponsor of the weekly Meet Me at Maynard’s walk/run downtown, Johnson says El Rio expects to have a lot of employees participating once the move into the Manning House is complete.
A fun tidbit: Some of the construction workers say they’ve seen signs of a ghost that has been long-rumored to live on the property. Johnson says all have reported the ghost is friendly.
Five things to know about El Rio Community Health Center and its plans for the future:
1. El Rio is increasingly seeing patients with commercial insurance.
About 17 percent of El Rio’s patients have private, commercial insurance, a percentage that has been rising over the past 10 years. Slightly more than half of El Rio’s patients are enrolled in the the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, and 17 percent are uninsured and access a sliding-fee scale. The rest are either on Medicare or the Pascua Yaqui Health Department’s HMO.
Federally qualified health centers like El Rio were started with funding from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”
“At that time, El Rio was seen by some as the ‘care of last resort’ for those who could not afford care or insurance,” Johnson said. “Forty-five years later, El Rio is a ‘provider of first resort’ with state-of-the-art technology, nationally recognized physicians and clinical staff, integrated care ... Our quality data on the care of our patients illustrates our ability to optimize health for our community.”
2. El Rio sees more than 85,000 individual patients every year.
With 10 different clinical campuses around town, El Rio handles more than 345,000 patient visits per year.
3. The still-under-construction Manning 2 building will, among other things, house El Rio’s 24/7 nurse triage program.
Enrolled El Rio patients have access to nurses at all times of the day and night, 365 days per year. Common questions are about medication management and pregnancy issues. The triage program gets more than 4,000 calls per year.
4. Nancy Johnson became the CEO in late October.
Kathy Byrne retired as El Rio’s CEO in July, and Johnson, who served as chief operations officer for six years, took the reins while the board of directors searched for Byrne’s replacement.
In the end, the board members decided unanimously that Johnson was the best candidate for the job.
“El Rio is committed to helping people stay healthy and away from hospitals and emergency rooms,” Johnson said. “El Rio is what great health care will look like in the future.”
She has a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Illinois. Since moving to Tucson 32 years ago, she has added a master’s degree in marketing and a Ph.D. in health sciences, both from the University of Arizona.
5. It’s possible to get a primary care doctor at El Rio.
For children and pregnant women, there is no wait time. For others, it is typically a month to get a group primary care doctor introduction and up to six weeks to see the doctor individually.
El Rio officials have also been adding after-work and Saturday hours at some campuses in an effort to help working Tucsonans.
