3
Community clinics benefit uninsured
A doctor cares for a patient at a hospital in Panorama City, Calif.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: Finally some positive news about health care. A study published today in the journal Health Affairs finds more money for community clinics has meant more treatment for the uninsured. From our Health Desk at WHYY in Philadelphia, Gregory Warner filed this report.
Tim Leaman: Hello! How are you guys? How are you?
Gregory Warner: For the last nine years, Jean Dupre and his wife, Jacqueline, have had one primary care doctor: Doctor Tim Leaman.
Leaman: And this is the best your blood pressure has looked in a long time. So that's really good news.
Leaman tugs at a stethoscope hung around his collar like a gym towel. He works for the Esperanza Health Center in North Philadelphia. It's one of 1,200 federally funded health centers in low-income neighborhoods.
Centers reduce expensive hospital visits by focusing on preventative care and community outreach. A new study published today reports that community centers are also more effective than many hospitals at channeling federal money to the uninsured. Professor Anthony Lo Sasso at the University of Illinois authored the study.
Anthony Lo Sasso: For every dollar that they receive in federal grants, a little over 25 cents of that dollar actually goes to uncompensated care.
Doctor Leaman says that uninsured patients can feel so stigmatized that they don't seek care until the last minute, and it's often in a hospital emergency room. He says it takes a familiar face to gain people's trust.
Leaman: A trust level develops that allows people to feel that they're being seen as a person, being taken care of as a person.
Which means when Leaman tells them to lose weight or take their heart medicine, they're more likely to listen.
In Philadelphia, I'm Gregory Warner for Marketplace.
Thank God for community clinics.It is tragic that we as a great nation can't figure out a solution to the uninsured
situation. Other countries have already done it and it seems the same"pride" that got us to the top will ironically bring us to our knees if we don't embrace change. Until then, we have to take advantage of existing programs. There are at least two of
them which I feel everyone needs to know about. One is the "Patient Assistance
Program" and two are free discount prescription cards that exist. I know of a site
(www.medpap.ws)which goes over both .I hope this helps until we as a people truly realize we are only as strong as our weakest link.
Community based clinics are popping up in the drug stores all around here in Cranberry Twp. We just got our H1N1 vaccinations at CVS. But, my thought is that underneath it all, prices of the drugs and drugstore products have to go up to cover these costs. Better economics to do clinics through non-profits with enough federal funds that they don't have to use their time and effort to go begging for private funding. Pharmacies come and go all the time but a local clinic like Esperanza will become a permanent community asset.
