Despite the fire raging on the western horizon, more than 50 people came to the Mancos Junior High Thursday night to mull the opportunities for, and barriers to, a community health center in Mancos.

Marguerite Salazar and Konnie Martin, respectively the president and operations manager of Valley-Wide Health Services, Inc., described the history and nature of VWHS, operator of a variety of clinics, pharmacies and other health-care facilities in the San Luis and Arkansas valleys. Salazar emphasized that they only go into communities when requested and they price their services to be comparable with similar services in the community.

VWHS is able to succeed in under-served areas, according to Salazar, because they:

• Are a private, nonprofit organization.

•  Can get higher reimbursement rates for Medicaid.

• Can order some supplies in bulk for their 12 clinics.

• Centralize billing for the clinics.

• Bill more than 80 insurance companies and HMOs, as well as Medicare, Medicaid and other state and federal programs.

• Are eligible for, and have had success in getting, grants from federal, state and private sources ($1.6 million in federal grants currently).

Dr. Allan Burnside and his wife, Linda Burnside, P.A., who together ran the Mancos clinic until it closed before Memorial Day, attended the meeting. Dr. Burnside estimated it would take five years to build a practice in Mancos. Linda Burnside observed that she did not feel the community was comfortable with physician’s-assistant care providers.

During the question-and answer-period, she said her experience with Valley-Wide had been good. She recalled, "The six months I didn’t have trouble filing a claim was the six months I went to the clinic in Alamosa," referring to one of the Valley-Wide clinics.

Others stressed the importance of continuity of personnel in the clinic, building a sense of trust and confidence.

Twenty-nine attenders at the Mancos Senior Center signed their names to this statement:

"There is a continuing and growing need for quality health care in the Town of Mancos. We, the undersigned, are in full support of a Medical Clinic in Mancos."

Michael O’Traynor, new owner of the clinic building in Mancos, said he and his wife, Alice, would work with the community on using part of the structure for a clinic. "We’ll hold it open," he said, while the research process goes on.

Winding up the gathering, Salazar and Martin said it will take six to nine months to pull the information together to assess the Mancos Valley’s status as a medically under-served area. There are sign-up sheets in businesses around Mancos for citizens to express their support for, or opposition to, a Mancos health center. The sheets will be available for signatures until Aug. 5; then they will be collected for analysis at the Aug. 10 meeting of the Mancos Valley Health Resource Advisory Committee, which will be held in the community center at 7:30 p.m.