County cut to health care would affect thousands
GREENSBORO — The Guilford Community Care Network added more doctors this year and is reaching out to specialists to help care for the county’s increasing number of uninsured.
But those efforts might be derailed if the county goes through with a planned $1.6 million cut to Guilford Adult Health, which would funnel down to Moses Cone’s HealthServe and High Point Regional’s adult health clinic.
The cut could “impact the care of several thousand patients,” said Dr. David Talbot, who works for Moses Cone Health System as medical director for HealthServe on South Eugene Street.
Most of HealthServe’s patients — about 75 percent — have no insurance.
HealthServe makes up just one piece of the Guilford Community Care Network. There are programs for immigrants, dental health and the other county-funded program, Guilford Child Health. The network also connects programs that work with the homeless, such as the Salvation Army’s Center of Hope.
Losing $1.6 million “will impact any of the network providers that has a need to refer its patients to a primary care medical home,” said Brian Ellerby, executive director of Guilford Adult Health and Guilford Child Health. Guilford Adult Health also oversees the dental program and the care network, which issues a card to participants so they can access services.
“Even now there’s limited access to care because there’s so much demand in the community,” he said.
The Guilford Community Care Network started in 1998 but strengthened in the past six years as more agencies joined the effort, Ellerby said.
The network provides case management, ensuring patients are following up on appointments and connecting to the resources they need.
“What Guilford Community Care Network has done is taken that whole medical home concept, and they’ve really built it, to be this very large community system,” said Dr. Marian Earls, medical director of Guilford Child Health.
That’s important because case management has helped cut down on unnecessary emergency room visits, which are more expensive than preventive care, Earls and Talbot said.
The funding to run the network comes from various sources: grants, foundations, small copays from patients, Medicaid and Medicare, and the county. The largest source comes from the hospitals.
Moses Cone Health System spent $110 million on uncompensated care in 2008, the latest year figures were available. High Point Regional Health System spent more than $50 million on charity and uncompensated care last year, President Jeffrey Miller said.
The hospitals have told county officials that they’ll turn over the child health program to the county if funding is pulled from the adult program. But they’re willing to compromise if commissioners restore at least some of the funding, he said.
Programs in the care network help people such as Ly Ngoc Kim, 58, who fled Vietnam where he was persecuted for teaching the Bible.
“From north to south, anybody that practices Christianity, they’re all in danger,” he said through an interpreter.
He was beaten so badly in 2007 that he suffers from memory lapses.
Kim has been unable to find work since arriving in the United States a year ago. The network helped him connect with a primary care physician and obtain medicine for his high blood pressure.
“This card has helped me a lot in my life,” Kim said in halting English, sometimes helped by an interpreter.
“I have nothing,” he continued. “I have no job. And I need to go to the doctor.”
Without the card, he could end up in the hospital or dead, Kim said.
Kim, a former school headmaster in Thailand, said it has been difficult finding work here. He lives with his brother and earns some money preaching part time at a church.
He is among an estimated 62,000 adults in Guilford County without insurance.
The number of uninsured has increased in the past three to five years as the economy has left more people unemployed, Talbot said.
And it’s not just the unemployed.
One patient at HealthServe still had her job as a fast food manager when an aneurysm left her blind in one eye, he said. But insurance had risen so much that she couldn’t afford it anymore. She now gets medical care at HealthServe, which works with about 12,000 adults.
“Who is going to take care of this person coming out of the hospital if there is no safety net provider?” Talbot asked.
Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Dr. Shannon McQueen laughs with Chozin Henryhand, 5, Thursday after Chozin wanted to listen to her heartbeat the way she listens to his during a visit to Guilford Child Health. Guilford Child Health is part of the Guilford Community Care Network, a...
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