2009-11-05

Community health clinic returns to three-day schedule

By Dan Wise,

Due to the generosity of Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, headquartered in San Antonio, the Arthur Nagel Community Clinic is again open to patients three days a week and the clinic staff is singing “With a Little Bit of Help from Our Friends.”

Methodist Healthcare Ministries actually awarded two grants to the clinic – $66,500 for clinic operations in 2009 and $32,480 for clinic operations in 2010. The grants were specifically awarded to enable the clinic to return to its three-day-a-week schedule.

“These grants are critical for our patients,” reported Margarita Sloan, RN, C-FNP, the clinic’s primary caregiver. “We are seeing new patients every week who have lost their jobs and their health insurance. With the growing demand for free and low-cost healthcare services in Bandera County, some of our patients have had to wait as much as three weeks to get an appointment. Three weeks is just too long to wait.”

The clinic is now open for appointments from 8:30 am until 2:30 pm, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. To schedule appointments, call the clinic at 830-796-3448 between those hours.

Helping Hand Crisis Intervention Center built the clinic in 2007 to meet the medical needs of low-income, uninsured residents of Bandera County. The clinic meets these needs through five distinct programs:

• primary healthcare, including diagnosis and treatment of non-emergency conditions;

• preventive healthcare, which focuses on chronic conditions as high cholesterol, obesity, hypertension and diabetes;

• a referral network, which includes 16 medical specialists to whom the clinic can refer patients who need more care than the clinic can provide;

• dental care, provided by three area dentists; and

• free public health education, offered through workshops, speaking engagements and health fairs.

The recently announced grants that make these services possible are not that unusual. Since 1996, Methodist Healthcare Ministries has become the largest non-public funding source for community healthcare to people in need throughout South Texas, including serving some of the poorest counties in the United States.

Methodist Healthcare Ministries provides care to the underserved through health and human services and programs that it owns and operates, as well as through financial support of established organizations that are already effectively fulfilling the needs of the underserved. Methodist Healthcare Ministries’ mission is to “serve humanity to honor God.”