PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Fishing Point Healthcare began accepting patients at its Portsmouth center on February 12, but there is still much more to come.
The center is part of the comprehensive health service founded by the Nansemond Indian Nation in 2023. It comes after the nation, which currently has about 450 citizens, received federal recognition in 2018.
A contract with Indian Health Services gave the nation the power to assume its own healthcare, opening the door to the ability to administer services in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland.
Fishing Point (which is the English translation of the Algonquian name "Nansemond") then grew from in-home healthcare for Medicaid patients to mental health and addiction recovery services in Chesapeake along with the primary care clinic and pharmacy in Portsmouth.
Located at the corner of London Boulevard and High Street, the Fishing Point center serves Medicaid recipients, uninsured people, and Indigenous communities.
"Our tribal nation understands the perspective of those who have been forgotten, those who have difficult[y] accessing basic services," said Nansemond tribal councilmember and Fishing Point board chair David "Black Feather" Darling. "What we're trying to provide, these services to this population, it's just, it's a big need. So, as fast as we can move to try to fill it is what we're doing."
Fishing Point Healthcare in Portsmouth currently offers primary care across a handful of exam rooms as well as full pharmacy services. Darling said the clinic aims to see about 50 patients per week and can make referrals for any needed services not offered onsite.
The center also works to help people get insurance coverage and provides transportation as needed.
"A lot of our patient population will tend to use the emergency room almost as a private provider... We help the hospital system because we're offloading that," Darling said. "And now, you have like, FQHCs [Federally Qualified Health Centers] they're called, like Community Health Centers. Community Health Centers are funded by grants, and those grants typically do not allow them to provide specialty care. We are a friend to our neighborhood, local community centers because those patients that need things beyond what they can offer, we can provide it."
Darling said the health center also helps to ease the strain on private practices in the area.
"We can assume those patients for them that maybe they [want to] be able to serve that their practice can't afford to," Darling said.
And that's just during phase one of the facility. Darling said the Nansemond Indian Nation planned to open the facility in two phases to begin providing some health services as soon as possible.
The second phase will add a lab, dental care, physical therapy, and radiology services. There will also be an additional 14 exam rooms.
"It's really a comprehensive medical center that really offers everything conceivably that you could offer in that center without surgery and without emergency care," Darling said.
Most of phase two is set to launch during the center's official grand opening celebration on July 19 and 20. Dental care is expected to begin in the fall.
"The people we are striving to serve struggle to really face down the necessities of life every day in a lot of circumstances," Darling said. "By providing kind of a one-stop center for them, we're trying to lower the barriers to care."
The Nansemond Indian Nation is now working on opening more healthcare centers across Hampton Roads.
Darling said the nation leased a building in Newport News that will include similar services to the Portsmouth location but will add MRI capabilities. Construction was slated to start on the facility by the end of May.
The nation also hopes to close soon on a building in Norfolk, Darling said, and hopes to add outpatient surgery to that location.
There have also been talks around opening a center on the grounds of the Nansemond Indian Nation's headquarters, which is Mattanock Town in northwestern Suffolk.
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