|
September 15 , 2009
 September signals the beginning of fall, back to school and the end of summer vacation. It’s a busy time for us at NECC.
Our Los Angeles school-based clinics at Foshay Learning Center near Watts and Gage Middle School in Bell are especially busy as youngsters get important back-to- school check-ups. But adults should also schedule check-ups at this time of year to ensure they are living the healthiest lives possible.
Our 11 clinics are located throughout the Los Angeles basin, where you will find linguistically-competent and culturally-sensitive staff waiting to treat you with dignity and respect.
If you have been laid off, our enrollers can find a program that will help you get the medical care you need. Our service is exemplified in this month's stories that highlight how we meet community needs in the midst of the healthcare crisis, and how our staff consistently go above and beyond the call of duty. I'm very proud of everything our clinic staff does to ensure that we continue to provide quality, comprehensive medical services regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.
At NECC, we believe good health is a right of everyone. It was that belief that helped us found our first clinic – one of Los Angeles’ original free clinics – back in 1971.
-Christopher Lau, MD
NECC Executive Director/CEO
 With all the rhetoric about health care these days, it’s just plain scary. Sometimes you don’t know what to believe. When you hear there are 46 million American with no health insurance--estimated to climb to 50 million by year-end, that 3.3 million Californians were uninsured over a year, it’s frightening.
Did you know only a quarter of California adults who are both uninsured and who have heart disease take medications for the disease? In California, seven out of ten children who are eligible for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families--programs that insure quality healthcare for kids--remain uninsured for at least a year. At NECC, there is some good news.
Our clinics are filling important gaps in health care for the poor and underserved communities of Los Angeles. NECC clinics saw an increase of 16,343 visits from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009, signifying more people are seeking community clinics and returning to NECC for their health care needs.“Information brings patients to us,” explains Angie Armada, NECC Operations Director, “but good service is what keeps them with us.”Women’s Wellness Clinic in downtown Los Angeles lead the charge with an increase of 7,725 visits; NECC Highland Park increased its visits by 2,624; and Wilmington Family Care’s visits in Wilmington rose to 2,229.
The total number of pediatric visits at NECC clinics rose from 47,447 in 2008 to 50,804 in 2009; for prenatal, from 16,608 to 24,806; family planning visits from 11,265 to 11,983; for diabetes from 6,849 to 7000; and asthma visits in 2008 of 1,252 to 1,653 in 2009.
“NECC is proud to be serving so many communities in the Los Angeles region since 1971,” says Dr. Christopher Lau, Executive Director/CEO. “Bringing quality health care to poor and underserved people of Los Angeles County is our mission.”
NECC operates 11 clinics from Wilmington to Watts, Highland Park to Huntington Park, Bell to Hawthorne and throughout downtown Los Angeles.
California Community Foundation has granted Northeast Community Clinics $25,000 for purchase of i2i Tracks. The new software system is expected to revolutionize the way community clinics like NECC tracks patients, especially those with chronic diseases, and report data to government and social service agencies and health collaboratives.
Tracking patients is one of the biggest challenges now facing NECC, due in part to the influx of so many new patients because of recent closures of other community clinics and urgent care facilities that could not stay afloat during recent state budget stalemates.
“We believe i2i Tracks, a leading chronic disease and preventative health management system (CDMS), will help us track our patients more effectively and in the long run, provide a higher level of patient care,” explains Dr. Christopher Lau, executive director/CEO. “Our focus initially will be tracking diabetic and asthma patients.
“By supplementing our current Patient Management systems with i2i, we can vastly improve our capabilities to provide complete health care services to our patient population,” says Dr. Lau. “The addition of a system that automates tracking of patient health status, ongoing health problems and associated treatment can provide enormous benefits, both to Northeast and to our patients.”
The California Community Foundation was formed in 1915 as a charitable giving option within the trust department of Security Pacific Bank. For the next 65 years, the foundation, which was affectionately known as the “typewriter foundation,” stayed relatively small, making small grants mostly for equipment and capital.
In the 1980's and ’90s, the foundation grew tremendously from $20 million in assets in 1980 to $530 million in assets in 2000. Fueled by a strong stock market and escalating Southern California real estate, donors and their advisors increasingly used the foundation as a primary philanthropic vehicle.
Reflecting this growth, grants also grew during this time, and the Community Foundation built a reputation of philanthropic entrepreneurship and risk-taking. In the 1990's, the foundation made the decision to move from broad and general grantmaking to a focus on specific issue areas.
The California Community Foundation (CCF) will contribute an initial grant of $150,000 to support immediate relief in the wake of a wildfire that has ravaged Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles.
 Most people come to NECC clinics looking for healthcare, even if it is proactive.
Sometimes they get a little more.
Recently, one patient got a lot more.
The woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, contacted a school counselor who called Community Medical Alliance (Bell) Clinic Manager, Sandy Wooten, for help.
She passed the information on to the clinic’s Referral Clerk, Irene Micklo, who literally took the ball and ran with it!
The woman had four children, one without insurance since he was undocumented. She was in an abusive relationship and would become homeless by the weekend. The icing on the cake, however, was that her insurance benefits for chemotherapy for breast cancer were being discontinued by her insurance.
By the end of the day, Irene had found the family housing, had enrolled the child without insurance into Gage Middle School’s clinic for a back-to-school physical and had obtained free chemo benefits for the woman.
She also provided domestic violence information, including a list of shelters that would accept her and her children.
Now that’s what we call service! Hats off to Irene Micklo for penultimate NECC patient service!
|
