This is in response to “`Painful’ health cuts are seen for county” (Metro, Jan. 10). Current County Health Chief Dr. Robert Simon was quoted as saying, “A lot of those sites see seven, maybe 10, maybe 12 patients a day.”
Readers of this article may interpret this as waste.
However, Simon doesn’t explain that the clinics he referred to are school-based health centers.
For more than 14 years, school-based health centers have significantly increased access to quality health-care services for vulnerable populations of children and adolescents across Cook County.
The Ambulatory and Community Health Network of Cook County provides approximately 800,000 patient visits per year through 24 primary-care and specialty-care clinics.
Five of the 24 primary-care clinics are school-based health centers that serve a unique role within the ambulatory system by targeting services to our youth.
Their mission is to develop healthy behaviors that prevent serious and costly health problems as students mature into adulthood.
School-based health centers provide quality health-care services.
They operate like a doctor’s office that is located right in the school. Students can receive immunizations, physical exams, care for chronic illnesses like asthma as well as mental-health counseling and health education.
Staffed by a nurse practitioner, a mental-health professional and a medical assistant, they are an inexpensive source of comprehensive health services. The school-based health centers receive state grants that help to cover operating costs and many of the services are reimbursable through Medicaid.
More than 1,600 school-based health centers across the country make health care accessible for children and adolescents, including 50 in Illinois. National and local evaluations have demonstrated school-based health centers decrease school absenteeism, reduce emergency room visits and reduce unhealthy behaviors that compromise health and education success.
The benefits of school-based health centers do not stop there.
A cost-benefit analysis of the Illinois school-based health centers conducted last year found that they save Illinois an estimated $2.5 million each year by reducing expensive visits to emergency rooms, $2.72 million a year by providing immunizations and $233,000 to $342,000 a year by reducing asthma-related hospitalizations.
As County Board President Todd Stroger and county commissioners consider where to make cuts in an inflated budget, we hope they take the time to understand the impact of the ambulatory system in preventing costly health-care services.
Cutting programs will adversely affect the lives of children and families who rely on clinics for their health-care needs.
