• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Community Health Centers Serve Critical Role in Medical System

Posted on: Sunday, 4 December 2005, 15:00 CST

By GUY BOULTON

Frederick Hines, an unemployed diabetic, went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Heritage Health Center last week when he ran out of insulin.

If the clinic were not there, he said, he would have gone to a hospital emergency department.

"That's the only alternative," said Hines, who gets health care through Milwaukee County's General Assistance Medical Program.

Hines is one of about 57,000 people in the Milwaukee area who are patients of community health centers.

The centers, long described as an essential part of the health care safety net, have become an integral part of the health care system.

Nationally, 14 million people are patients of community health centers, up from 10.3 million patients since 2001, according to the National Association of Community Health Centers. In Wisconsin, the centers cared for 137,542 patients last year.

"They maintain relatively low costs. They provide effective services. And they are in areas where they need to be," said Peter Shin, an assistant research professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.

Community health centers' role has grown steadily over the past 15 years, especially since President Bush pledged in 2000 to double the number of people they serve to 16 million by 2006.

Since then, federal funding to open new centers or expand existing ones has increased to $1.7 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up from $925 million in the 1999 fiscal year. In that time, more than 300 centers have opened or expanded.

In Wisconsin, federal grants have roughly doubled, from about $8 million to almost $16 million, and new centers have opened in Madison, Superior and the Fox Valley. Existing centers also have expanded.

Community health centers provide health care for people who live in rural and urban areas with high poverty rates and a shortage of doctors. Most of their patients are enrolled in Medicaid, other government health programs or uninsured.

The Milwaukee area has four centers: Sixteenth Street Community Health Center; Milwaukee Health Services, which operates the Martin Luther King center; Westside Healthcare Association and Health Care for the Homeless of Milwaukee.

They frequently are the only source of dental care for people on Medicaid, the General Assistance Medical Program or without health insurance. In addition, they provide services, such as translators, that can be hard to find in traditional health care settings.

"They help limit the health care disparities that we see across the nation," said Shin, who has done research on community health centers.

The centers are run by community boards, and the majority of the boards must be patients of the center.

"We like to call it patient democracy," said Amy Simmons, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Community Health Centers.

The centers get federal grants to help offset the cost of caring for people without insurance. They also get state and local funds as well as higher payments from Medicaid.

Federal grants accounted for 25% of the centers' revenue while Medicaid accounted for 35% in 2002, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which does research on health policy.

By law, the centers cannot turn away patients, and they are one of the few sources of health care for the uninsured. People without health insurance pay so-called sliding-scale fees based on their income.

Nationally, the uninsured accounted for 39% of the patients at community health centers in 2002. The number is lower in the Milwaukee area because of the General Assistance Medical Program, Milwaukee County's health program for people who are indigent but not eligible for other health programs.

But Hines, the diabetes patient at the Martin Luther King center, said it is hard to find doctors who accept General Assistance care patients. That's why, a few months ago, the Westside Healthcare Association started taking more of those patients.

"They needed a place to go," said Jenni Sevenich, the community health center's executive director and chief executive.

Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

More News in this Category