4Cs Clinics seek to serve uninsured residents

Reported in the Galveston Daily News
by Kelly Hawes
04/30/06

When she was working, Saundra Coffey took her health insurance for granted.“I probably didn’t even use it as much as I should have,” she said.

Last year, though, Coffey got laid off from her job at a car dealership. In October, she wound up as a patient at Mainland Medical Center. She ran up a $20,000 medical bill in three days.
“I haven’t been able to pay any of it,” she said. “They’ve turned it over to a collection agency.”

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Coffey was among the patients in the waiting room at the 4Cs Clinic in Texas City.“Today’s my first visit,” she said. “I came in as a walk-in. I had an appointment, but it’s a month away.”Her cousin, Richa Clawson, accompanied Coffey.

“I dragged her in here,” Clawson said. “She can’t wait a month. She has some issues she needs to deal with now.”Clawson said she and Coffey arrived at the clinic at 8:30 a.m.

“They were so crowded they told everyone who didn’t have an appointment to come back this afternoon,” she said.Among the issues Coffey was hoping to have addressed were the medications prescribed by her family physician.“She can’t afford them,” Clawson said.

Unlike hospitals, the 4Cs Clinics are working to increase the number of uninsured patients walking through their doors. The clinics are part of a campaign seeking to link prospective patients with a medical home.

“Because of our designation as a federally qualified health center, we get a higher reimbursement from Medicaid for the patients we serve,” said Mark Guidry, chief executive officer for the Galveston County Health District.

Ben Raimer, vice president for community outreach at the University of Texas Medical Branch, is among the clinics’ greatest advocates.

“They have a staff of qualified individuals providing excellent health care,” he said. Raimer acknowledged that some patients had shied away from the clinics. “I think in the past the clinics were not viewed as service-oriented,” he said. That reputation, he said, was largely undeserved.

“The clinics are an option that people ought to at least look at,” he said. “Most of the people who have gone there have ended up staying as patients.”

For the most part, Guidry said, the clinics have the capacity to care for more patients. “It depends on the day and the hour,” he said.

They are working to put themselves in a position to see even more. The health district has a project under way to make the Texas City clinic more accessible.

“If you walk into that clinic most mornings, you’ll see a line of people,” he said. The problem is that they’re not all waiting for the same thing. “Some want to register as patients, some want to see a physician and some just want to pick up a prescription,” Guidry said.

Some of those waiting to see a physician have appointments, and others, like Coffey, do not.

“We’d like to restructure the clinic so that doesn’t happen,” Guidry said.

The clinic will be reconfigured so that patients coming in for different reasons don’t all wind up in the same line.

In the meantime, the health district will continue to spread the word that the clinics are a source of quality medical care. Guidry noted that the clinics were certified by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

“We’re among the very few community clinics that are,” he said.

For More Information Contact:
Kurt Koopmann
Public Information Officer
Galveston County Health District
409-938-2211 or 409-392-0007
kkoopman@gchd.org