AIR DATE JUNE 15, 2023
Title: Community Medical Care
Learn about affordable community medical care options available in central Florida.
Guests
Care-A-Medix, Founder – Ken Peach
Community Health Centers Inc., President/Chief Executive Officer & Family Medical Provider – Debra Andree, MD & Jocelyn Pichardo, MD
How to Access Healthcare Resources When Barriers Exist
Healthcare access is a critical need for all Central Floridians. Although we have some of the best facilities in the world here, several barriers can prevent people from making appointments or receiving treatment.
I recently spoke with Doctors Debra Andree and Jocelyn Pichardo from the Community Health Center in Bithlo about overcoming scheduling challenges.
“We all have barriers and challenges in our lives, and competing priorities,” said Dr. Andree. “Community Health Centers works with each patient to ensure that they have access to quality, affordable healthcare. We try and break down barriers by looking at healthcare from the continuum.”
Many people have chronic conditions that require treatment and other ongoing support. I spoke with Ken Peach, founder of Care-A-Medix, about how this issue is being solved.
“Our paramedics do not come in ambulances. Instead, they come in their private cars,” he said. “When the doctor says they would like to keep you out of the emergency department and out of the hospital… we can do this by having a paramedic extend the physician’s practice into the home.”
Hospital Partnerships Unlock Care Opportunities
“We partner with several of the major hospital systems, and we go out into the hospitals to visit our patients that are already assigned to us,” Dr. Andree told me. “We visit them in the hospital rooms and in the ER to help decrease their length of stay and unnecessary ER visits.”
“[Our] mission is to provide primary, quality and compassionate healthcare services for Central Florida’s diverse communities,” added Dr. Andree. “We are in many locations, very close to where you live and go to school and work, and we’re happy to be your provider if you do not currently have one.”
For an organization like Care-A-Medix, the focus tends to be on chronic conditions. “That would be diabetes and hypertension,” Peach told me. “Those that we so much, but congestive heart failure, kidney disease in the earlier stages – what the physicians want us to do is to keep those cases at the lower stage.”
A Patient’s Income Doesn’t Stop Care Provision
Community Health Centers use a sliding-scale discount system to keep services affordable while taking Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance. “Sometimes, patients may feel that if they come to a specific underserved area or underserved clinic that the quality of the care will be lower than what they receive,” Dr. Pichardo said. “We are guided by the quality of the care we provide, constantly looking to ensure we are following the standard.”
Peach says his focus is on finding grants. “The South Florida Foundation has taught organizations, nonprofit organizations like us to focus first on grants,” he told me. “That’s how funded this initially for the pilot program. Our program moved to self-sufficiency about three years in. Most of our program is supported by large medical groups, and they’re funded so that they are in better financial condition if they provide prevention rather than waiting for a patient to end up in the emergency department of the hospital.”
Whether you need help scheduling an appointment, going to your doctor’s office, or having caregivers come to you, a solution in Central Florida lets you tap into those necessary resources.
More information about Community Health Centers is available at chcfl.org, where you can find specific locations near you. If you’re interested in the services offered by Care-A-Medix, you can explore the available options at care-a-medix.org.
