A shot in the arm for community

TEXAS CITY — Stroll through the county health clinic in Texas City and you might notice some changes — new dental chairs, new X-ray machines and a fresh coat of paint on the walls.

The upgrades have done a little to improve the clinic where doctors see mostly uninsured patients, but not enough, county officials say.

Dr. Mark Guidry, the district’s chief executive officer, has his eyes on a bigger prize — the empty Wal-Mart building on FM 1764.

The health district has been wary of spending too much money renovating the crowded clinic on Texas Avenue. The county rents the building, and officials say it wouldn’t be financially sound to renovate a space the county doesn’t own. Health district officials have been lobbying to move into the 125,000-square-foot Wal-Mart building, which the county plans to buy within the next month, said County Judge Jim Yarbrough.

It will cost the county $3.1 million to buy the old Wal-Mart, which is twice as big as the old courthouse and has more than 850 parking spaces. It’s not clear how much it would cost to renovate the building to house the clinic, the health district headquarters, the Galveston Appraisal District and the Texas City tax office. The county government is still hashing out the details of a financing plan.

Yarbrough said the renovation might be part of a bond election that might be on the ballot in November, or the county might issue certificates of obligation.

The vacant Wal-Mart building, sandwiched in a shopping center next to a VA clinic and a University of Texas Medical Branch clinic, is an ideal spot for a county health department, Guidry said.

There’s enough room that the Texas City clinic could add 10 exam rooms, a priority for a rapidly growing county, Guidry said. The clinics in Galveston and Texas City now see 18,000 patients a year. That number is expected to grow.

The empty building is also easier than the Texas City clinic to wire for electronic medical record keeping, a federal mandate by 2010. Aside from fulfilling a federal mandate, electronic medical records would speed up patient care and improve the quality of care by giving doctors ready access to patient allergies and medical histories, Guidry said.

The layout of the clinic, which is in an old grocery store, is inefficient, health officials say. Patients waiting to be seen by doctors sometimes sit in hard plastic chairs in long hallways. The nurses’ station is in the back of the building, away from the exam rooms. There’s no security, and patients sometimes have little privacy with receptionists.

If the clinic moves into the Wal-Mart, all that will change, Guidry said. The health district has preliminary architectural renderings of what the new space would look like. There’s a larger, central waiting room and a nurses’ station close to exam rooms. The design is intended for patients to flow smoothly from check-in to waiting room to exam room.

Under the health district proposal, the department’s headquarters in La Marque would be moved into the Wal-Mart.

The administration building is old. The foundation is cracking and shifting. The air-conditioning vents are rusted. There’s asbestos in the walls. Many employees share offices; sometimes there are five people crammed into an office meant for one.

The health district has saved $750,000 to help with the move. Once the money is approved for the project, it will take about 18 months to renovate the building, health officials said.