Meeting the Need

In our view

Drive by SouthEast Lancaster Health Services on South Duke Street any Tuesday or Thursday morning and you will find a line of people waiting to be treated for an acute dental or oral emergency. Because patients are seen on a first-come, first-served basis, some begin lining up as early as 5:30 a.m. – two hours before the clinic opens.

They come because they have few options. They either lack insurance, have limited funds or cannot get into a similar medical/ dental clinic.

The sheer number of people who use this emergency dental service alone – roughly 2,200 per year – attests to its need. Yet, SouthEast is one of the few health centers that continues to accept new patients – dental and medical – regardless of ability to pay.

Friday evening, SouthEast held a gala celebration at Clipper Magazine Stadium. The event was designed as a fundraiser and as a way of raising awareness of the services SouthEast provides and of the need for such services.

Unfortunately, that need is growing. Patients paid more than 34,000 visits to the medical clinic last year. Another 9,000 visited the dental clinic and 4,000 additional visits were recorded at the center’s Brightside Opportunities Center.

Executive director Jim Kelly said over the past four years, the number of people using the medical clinic has risen 44 percent. A growing number of patients either have no insurance or cannot afford insurance offered by their employers. That’s not news to anyone who has been following the debate on health insurance coverage or to those at the center who have been providing coverage to patients for 27 years.

SouthEast allows patients to pay on a sliding scale, based on income and family size. It also receives funding from county, state and federal sources as well as from Medicare and commercial insurance. Private donations help, as does funding from the United Way of Lancaster County. And the center also has increased its own fundraising efforts in the face of cutbacks at the federal level due to the restructuring of the Medicaid system.

As the United Way campaign winds down, we remind readers about the multitude of services made possible under the United Way umbrella. Those contributions help everyone in the community – including those waiting in line on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

Originally published by Intelligencer Journal Staff.

(c) 2007 Intelligencer Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.