A nonprofit primary care provider in Normal has served a largely uninsured and non-English speaking clientele for more than three decades.
But Holly Wayland-Hall, the Community Health Care Clinic’s [CHCC] recently appointed executive director, said she’s found many people in McLean County either don’t know about the clinic, or have misconceptions about what it offers.
“Many people think that we're an emergency clinic that people will come to in crisis, and that's really not what we're intended to be,” Wayland-Hall said on WGLT's Sound Ideas. “We're intended to be a medical home for people who don't have a medical home.”
Raising awareness about the clinic — that it offers physical, behavioral and dental health care, as well as limited pharmacy services — is a top priority for Wayland-Hall, who started at the clinic in October after several months of interim leadership.
“We're continuing to try to drive bringing people into the clinic to see who we are and what we do,” she said.
Another priority for Wayland-Hall at the moment is financials.
Before joining the CHCC, Wayland-Hall spent the majority of her adult career in senior living. She most recently was the executive director of the Village at Mercy Creek in Normal, which she said has been helpful because both are nonprofits, relying on grants and donations for operations.
“We don't receive any reimbursement for the services that we provide,” she said of the clinic. “Being able to continue to exist, to serve this population in need, is dependent on our ability, really, to continue to fund ourselves.”
In 2023, individual gifts and grants accounted for just under 82% of the CHCC’s roughly $1 million total operating revenue, according to a 2024 impact report. That helped the clinic serve 98 new patients and 764 total clients, most of whom were bilingual and uninsured.
Wayland-Hall estimates more than 90% of patients speak languages other than English, and potentially, no English at all.
The clinic’s previous director — Mike Romagnoli, who stepped down in January of 2024 — spoke English and Spanish. Wayland-Hall only speaks English, but she said that shouldn’t be an issue. She pointed out that half of the 10-person staff speak multiple languages, as do volunteers.
“They're individuals who are working directly with the patients in their appointments and able to understand and have those important direct conversations moving,” she said.
Right now, the clinic is wrapping up Gift of Health, its end-of-year campaign, which Wayland-Hall said she’s hopeful will bring in a good chunk of revenue to serve even more clients — from across backgrounds — going forward.
