Family Planning Association of Maine
Maine
The Family Planning Association of Maine (FPA), like many of NFPRHA’s members, plays a variety of roles in their state: administrator, provider, educator, and advocate. As the sole Title X grantee for the state of Maine, the FPA ensures that quality family planning services are available throughout the state at 11 delegate agencies and 43 total sites including federally qualified health centers, school-based health centers, and other family planning providers. These sites serve over 30,000 patients per year and exist in every county of the state, many of which are very rural. The FPA also provides family planning services at four sites and abortion care at two others. Its full-time advocacy program works both at the state and federal levels.
The FPA operates the statewide Family Life Education (FLE) Services program, which provides professional development for teachers and administrators, curriculum development and design, parent programs, and resources on comprehensive, age-appropriate sexuality education for gradesK-12. “[The program]is undergoing transition right now,” said Sue McPhee, FPA’s Vice President of External Relations and Development. “The most recent strategic thinking is around the science-based programs [and] looking seriously at ways we can increase our effectiveness by merging community-based outreach activities with family life education consultation services.”
The FPA recently received private funding to implement science-based strategies in Rockland, Maine—a community with a teen pregnancy rate that is double the statewide average. FPA will build a stakeholder group, create an evidence-based curriculum, and work to be effective with limited resources. The FPA hopes to replicate this program, with community-specific nuances, in order to create the best evidence-based programming while being cost-efficient. The CDC said in a study that Maine’s FLE program was part of the state’s success in reducing teen pregnancy rates. “We were once one of the highest,” said McPhee. “Now we are the fifth lowest. Maine’s teen pregnancy rate decreased 45 percent between 1984 and 2004, and by 27 percent in the last ten years alone, one of the most dramatic improvements in the nation.”
Right now, the FPA is working with its regional training center to create a clinic efficiency process for all of the family planning programs in the state. Seven programs are participating in a study to create the best complement of open access, or same-day appointments, and scheduled appointments in order to reduce the no-show rate while ensuring that patient needs are being met. “What I like about this project is that we’ve done a baseline – we know everyone’s no-show rate currently and we’re tracking it over time,” said Evelyn Kieltyka, FPA’s Senior Vice President of Program Services. “When we get to what we think the right mix is, we do a survey of a sample of staff and patient satisfaction.”
This segment of the project was finished at the end of November, and FPA presented their findings at a Title X Region I meeting. According to periodic reports from their consultant, overall no-show rates are going down for the sites participating. “We’ve found that the folks who are doing more same-day appointments have fewer no-shows,” said Kieltyka. Kieltyka said it may seem obvious that patients show up when they can make appointments quickly, but having a process, data, and satisfaction surveys provides much-needed support when moving to a new process. This project has also provided the FPA with valuable information about the need for more capacity at some programs and surplus capacity at others, allowing the FPA to look at how to utilize staff more efficiently to support the overall family planning program.