Low-cost care vital to health of community

The Olympian • Published August 15, 2008

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Vital Signs 2008, a report released last week, highlights the ever-increasing role that nonprofit, community-owned health care centers play in providing medical care in this state and across the nation.

Without the services provided by the 24 community health centers and 130 clinic sites, the holes in the state's health care safety net would be far greater.

The centers, including Sea Mar Community Health Center in Olympia, provide health care to about 10 percent of the state's population, including half of the state's uninsured children.

Two-thirds of the patients are living at or below the poverty level. They pay for medical, dental and behavioral health care on a sliding scale, and nobody who comes to a clinic is turned away without care.

About one-third of all community health center patients are uninsured. But a growing number of patients with private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare coverage, Basic Health, or some other form of public insurance are turning to the community health centers because of their inability to access primary care physicians.

Low reimbursement rates for Medicaid patients have a direct effect on the health centers. Patients on Medicaid now make up 42 percent of the patient load, a 73 percent increase since 2000.

New clinic is welcome news

And now comes the terrific news that a new health clinic that accepts people without insurance is scheduled to open in Lacey this year.

Laura Splawn, manager of the Olympia Sea Mar health center, said high demand for affordable medicine in Thurston County prompted the need for a new clinic in Lacey. Sea Mar, based out of Seattle, has 14 clinics statewide.

According to Splawn, the Olympia clinic had 37,000 visitors last year, nearly two-thirds of them in poverty. Sea Mar clinics provide access to doctors, mental health treatment and dental care, often in the same building. They rely on government-sponsored coverage and grants for most of their funding, charging those with no coverage $20 for an office visit.

Statewide, Sea Mar reports that 47 percent of its patients are white, but locally the figure is 69 percent. Medicaid, the taxpayer-paid health insurance program for low-income people, covers 43 percent of all Sea Mar patients. But 55 percent of the Olympia clinic's patients use it, according to clinic staff members.

Sea Mar officials selected a Hawks Prairie building to house the new clinic based on tracking the patients using the Olympia clinic, nursing manager Nicole Liu said.

"We have a quite a few patients that come from Yelm, and hopefully, the Lacey clinic will serve some of them," she said.

With the addition of the Lacey clinic, the poor in Thurston County now have an improved safety net for medical services.

The low-income health centers are part of the health care crisis solution, but they'll need increased support as more and more demands are placed on them to fill holes in the health care system.