Health care reform reaches people in need through community health centers
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John Rose, 85, of Point Breeze, has his blood checked by medical assistant Margarita Bidrat at the Squirrel Hill Health Center. A long-time patient of geriatrician Andrea Fox, Mr. Rose was the first patient at the clinic when it opened 3 1/2 years ago. -
Susan Friedberg Kalson, CEO, Squirrel Hill Health Center: "In my dream world, we'd get an expanded site."
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The sunshine-splashed waiting room of the Squirrel Hill Health Center was open for business one recent morning and a friendly sign was ready to greet patients from the surrounding multicultural community:
It began with, "In the languages of the Squirrel Hill Health Center clinicians," and went on to repeat the word "welcome" again and again -- in Russian, English, Hebrew, Spanish and American sign language.
The center also has a clinician who speaks Arabic, and if it gets a patient who speaks, say, Burmese or Nepali (and that has happened), the center uses a telephone translation line to help patients and medical personnel speak with each other.
The patients come in all ages, nationalities, religions and income levels. Many are uninsured; some have private insurance; and others are covered by Medicare or Medicaid. The health center serves Squirrel Hill, Hazelwood, Garfield, Glen Hazel, and parts of Oakland, but no one is turned away.
"It has turned out to be for the whole community," CEO Susan Friedberg Kalson said of the health center, which was founded in 2006 by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation of Pittsburgh. "It's a real mix ... a model for the brave new world we're moving into in the future."
The world Ms. Kalson referred to is one in which no American would go without health care -- the key target of the new health care reform law, which provides for an expansion of community health centers just like the Squirrel Hill center.
"We will be two-thirds of the way home [to extending health care to everyone] in five years instead of the one-third of the way we are today," said Dan Hawkins, senior vice president of policy and research for the National Association of Community Health Centers. The group represents 1,250 community health care organizations operating more than 8,000 sites. They in turn serve about 20 million patients, some 8 million of them uninsured.
Probably the biggest provision in the reform package is $11 billion earmarked for new funding for the community health centers program over five years beginning in fiscal year 2011, which starts in October. A total of $9.5 billion of the amount is for the health centers to expand their operations to serve nearly 20 million new patients. The remaining $1.5 billion will be allocated for expanding existing facilities and to build new ones.
First Published April 7, 2010 12:00 am
