La Familia Needs:
Funds are needed to cover the costs of providing preventive health education services to our uninsured patients.
La Familia Medical Center is the county’s largest and most comprehensive medical/dental center whose mission is to provide quality medical/dental care to anyone in need regardless of their ability to pay for services. La Familia Medical Center’s physicians, nurse practitioners, dentists, and dental hygienists provided care to over 20,000 patients during the last year. Often times, uninsured patients do not seek treatment for chronic illnesses until their health status calls for radical treatment, usually resulting from a visit to the emergency room. In these days of rising medical costs, prevention through education has significantly less negative financial impact on communities than supporting preventative educational services for the uninsured.
Most, if not all, of these patient visits are not chargeable to either the patient or to insurance companies should the patient have insurance. La Familia assumes the costs of providing these services and partially covers this cost through grants and contracts.
Funds are needed to cover the cost of the increase of
La Familia’s uninsured patient population — no longer a problem of only the indigent, but now evident in the middle-class. Funds are also needed for preventative programs such as the ‘Healthy Children’s Initiative’.
La Familia Medical Center receives federal, state, and county funds intended to offset some of the cost of providing services that are not covered by our sliding-fee scale. The percentage of our budget received from these sources has not increased with the number of uninsured patients being served, making it necessary for La Familia Medical Center to seek other funding resources such as grants and individual support.
