Griego: Health center fills a desperate need

Published November 11, 2006 at midnight

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The Inner City Health Center sits on Downing Street just north of 34th Avenue in a building it long ago outgrew. On a recent Friday morning, the patient schedule looked something like this:

• 8:30 a.m. - an 18-month-old boy with a rash; a 62-year-old man in for a diabetes check.

• 8:45 a.m. - an 11-year-old girl in for a well-child check and immunization; a 34-year-old woman returning to learn the results of her physical.

• 9:15 a.m. - a 3-year-old boy, who suffered from malnutrition while in his mother's womb, in for monitoring; a 39-year-old woman, three months pregnant, in for a prenatal check.

• 9:30 a.m. - a 4-year-old in for a checkup; a 34-year-old man in for a diabetes check.

All in all, on this Friday, the doctor and nurses were scheduled to see 45 patients. Downstairs, the dentist had 16 appointments.

It's a fairly typical day in an office that last year saw 6,900 individual patients, but logged almost three times as many visits, because one thing that the Inner City Health Center is most certainly not is an open-up-say-ah- don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out place.

The center's chief executive officer, Kraig Burleson, calls it a "health care home" to a specific group of people: the uninsured. This makes Inner City Health Center a busy home, a crowded home.

About 770,000 Coloradans lack medical insurance. If this number is hard to grasp, the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative translates it as one in five adults.

Enough stigma still surrounds the uninsured that a suburban mother who brought her sick son to the clinic told staff that she and her husband were embarrassed to admit to anyone that they didn't have insurance.

Her husband worked two part-time jobs, which added up to 40 hours a week, but not to medical benefits.

It's hard to predict how their story would have turned out if they had not finally turned to Inner City Health Center. It was there that a visiting volunteer doctor recognized in their boy the signs of leukemia.

The patient roster at the center has grown to include retail clerks and real estate agents, people who have no coverage or for whom the available coverage is out of reach. What was once a clinic that served the neighborhood is now one that serves the metro area.

Today, more than 35 percent of clients come from outside Denver.

The question that comes to mind when talking to and about patients at the center is what they would have done without it. The frequent answer is that they would have waited until they could wait no longer, then turned to the most expensive form of health care - the emergency room.

Which brings me to a few last facts about the center. The first is that patients pay for their care. About one-third are covered by Medicaid, but nearly all the rest pay on a sliding scale according to household income and family size. And they do pay. Even if it's a few dollars at a time. Fewer than 4 percent of the bills ever go to collection.

The second: Inner City Health Center is a private, nonprofit and relies on volunteers, donations and grants to provide care. The staff is supplemented by doctors and dentists who volunteer their time.

Finally, there is this. The center sprang from the Christian faith of two doctors 23 years ago. It revolves around a belief that we are obligated as human beings to help each other.

It is why the center staff understands perfectly what medical director Dr. Robert Cutillo means when he says of a patient, "I think I met Jesus yesterday," and when he writes, "Jesus said that when we care for those who are least in the eyes of the world . . . we actually care for him."

So, you will find Bibles in the waiting room and Scripture passages on the walls, but you will not find preaching in the exam rooms, where providing excellent health care is the focus.

"We try to live our faith, more than preach it," CEO Burleson says.

When I left the clinic that Friday, I stopped to talk to a young woman in the waiting room. She is 20 years old and pregnant with her first child. A friend of hers at work told her about the center.

What did your friend say? I asked her.

"She told me that they would take good care of me," she answered, and then settled in her chair and waited for her name to be called.

Inner City Health Center

• Purpose: Provide uninsured people living in the metro area with primary health care.

• Year founded: 1983

• Clients helped: In an average year, 20,000 patient visits.

• Number of staff: 40

• Number of volunteers: 80

• Budget: $2.6 million.

• Web site: www.innercityhealth.com

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