SIUE to expand ‘one-stop shop’ medical clinic in East St. Louis

Patients struggling to find health care in East St. Louis will have more options, now that a major expansion of the WeCare Clinic is underway with federal funding.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has operated a nurse-managed primary care clinic in East St. Louis since 1998. Six years ago, it moved to its current location on the East St. Louis campus, and a year ago the clinic was restructured and renamed as WeCare, designed to meet growing demand for medical services in an area that the federal government has designated as a “health care provider shortage region.”

That’s a long way of saying that people in East St. Louis have a hard time finding doctors who will see them, according to clinic director Dr. Kim White. She said a lot of health care providers no longer accept Medicaid, and those that do are “overwhelmed” with the number of patients seeking help. Adding to the problem: the East Side Health District has had to lay off 65 percent of its staff due to state budget cuts, the school-based health center is closed and their dental department is open only one day a week now.

For most of its history, the SIUE clinic was an outreach program, doing checkups out in the field. About 18 months ago, it became a primary care clinic, where patients could come for appointments with a nurse practitioner and be diagnosed, get medications refilled and referrals. But there was still another block: many patients needed help beyond primary care. They needed dentists, or help with their prescriptions, or social services to access resources. And WeCare would have to send them somewhere else.

Now beginning Sept. 1, WeCare will become a “one-stop shop” for medical, dental, pharmacy and social work services, thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The grant will fund three years of expanded services in this “interprofessional” approach of putting the multiple health and social services under one roof.

“We are developing this to be sustainable and replicable — if it works, it can be copied elsewhere,” White said. “It is a patient-centered, holistic approach to the whole person.... It avoids delays, and a more comprehensive approach will improve their health, catch problems earlier and make them healthier, which also decreases the cost of treatment.”

For Winderlee Miller, 64, a new patient at WeCare, the clinic is a big help in trying to treat her asthma. She often struggled with doctors not listening to her concerns, she said, but for the last four months she’s been treated at WeCare for her asthma and found that her allergies were part of the problem. “It’s a good team here, I love them,” she said.

Clinical coordinator Dr. Linda Omondi said that hypertension, diabetes and other chronic diseases are common among the population they serve. Many of them are on managed-care programs through Medicaid, and when they try to get appointments, they can’t see a medical professional for months, she said.

“We’re accessible and can give them efficient, safe care in a timely manner,” she said. “If a patient is homeless and can’t afford their medications, it’s difficult to deal with their health issues. Being a one-stop shop, they can get to see a pharmacist and a social worker...It’s welcomed for this area.”

It’s also a bonus for the medical professional programs at SIUE, White said. Students from the nursing, pharmacy, dental and social work departments will all be doing practicum internships through WeCare. “This way they’ll be able to get that interprofessional experience, learn about the perspectives of other professions and how the other professions mesh and can collaborate on patient care,” White said.

Dr. Lakesha Butler, a clinical professor in the School of Pharmacy, said incorporating students is an important aspect of the new clinic structure. “Exposing students to an interprofessional environment where they can receive practice-based training among other healthcare disciplines is a unique opportunity for them,” she said.

That cooperation is something that hasn’t always been the case in the medical profession, White said, and she believes it is key to health care of the future. “It’s a nurse-patient-advocate model, where the advocate coordinates all care among the professions. That person has the handle on everything that’s going on and makes sure the patient gets everything they need,” she said. “There’s a patient-advocate approach in some hospitals, but it’s not really been approached in a clinic or with these disciplines.”

The grant is renewable, but White said she hopes it will be enough of a success to sustain itself and provide a model for other clinics in development elsewhere in the United States.

“We’re all very excited about this,” she said. “We feel it’s really going to have some positive impact on the patients and our students.”

This story was originally published July 21, 2015 at 9:23 AM with the headline "SIUE to expand ‘one-stop shop’ medical clinic in East St. Louis."