Erie Family Health Center

Illinois Eye Institute to Transform Eye Care for Chicago’s Neediest Residents CHICAGO, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Illinois Eye Institute (IEI) has launched Chicago Vision Outreach, a pilot initiative that will improve eye care for patients in desperate need. The program will connect optometrists to underserved patients who suffer from vision and eye care problems often caused by chronic illnesses such as diabetes. This community-focused initiative, which will dramatically increase accessibility to eye care to many Chicago residents, is supported by a total of $350,000 in private grants. “We identified thousands of underserved patients who desperately need eye care in Chicago,” said Leonard Messner, O.D., executive director of the Illinois Eye Institute. “This initiative brings eye care directly to people suffering most, and who are least likely to receive it.” Many of these patients have vision problems brought on by complicated eye diseases such as glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates the prevalence of vision disorders among underserved adults was a staggering 26 percent in 2007. IEI has a tradition of treating patients regardless of their ability to pay and has become a safety net eye care provider for uninsured or under-insured Chicagoans. With Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) fast becoming the medical homes for these populations, frontline vision and eye care services need to be included in the primary healthcare services offered at these sites. If optometric services are provided, patients benefit and experience a significant increase in access to critical vision and eye care services. The pilot program has started at the Alivio Medical Center in the Pilsen neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. It will expand in several weeks to another Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Erie Family Health Center in Humboldt Park. Additional participants are expected to come on board as the program rolls out. “Alivio has worked diligently for the past several years with the Illinois Eye Institute to access eye care for patients,” said Carmen Velasquez, executive director of Alivio Medical Center. “We, at Alivio, are very pleased with this wonderful collaboration.” The cost of undiagnosed eye problems is stunning.

A report from Prevent Blindness America estimates the total annual impact of eye diseases at $51.4 billion in 2007. The Economic Impact of Vision Problems arrives at the total by citing two studies. The first, by KD Frick, et al, estimates at $35.4 billion annually the financial burden of visual impairment and blindness to individual caregivers and other healthcare payers. The second, by David Rein, et al, estimates the burden of vision problems to the U.S. economy at $16 billion a year. Early diagnosis and treatment of these illnesses is key to controlling national healthcare costs. Yet, currently, only 20 percent of FQHCs in the U.S. offer optometry services. The pilot is financed by seed grant funding from the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, Alcon Foundation and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois. The program fills a crucial need because only about five percent of eye care providers in Chicago accept patients who are uninsured or have Medicaid. As the clinical training facility of the Illinois College of Optometry (ICO), the Illinois Eye Institute will use this initiative to train tomorrow’s doctors how to address the diverse challenges of a patient population that desperately needs preventive eye care. This program gives ICO students a new opportunity to work in the community and treat underserved patients. This philosophy exemplifies ICO leadership within the healthcare community, where medical and dental schools are moving toward deploying students in community health centers to reach underserved patients.

About the Illinois Eye Institute Illinois Eye Institute (IEI) is the clinical division of the Illinois College of Optometry. IEI is a nonprofit, multi-specialty eye center that provides comprehensive eye care to individuals of all ages from the Chicago area and beyond, regardless of their financial status. It is designed and staffed to meet general ocular health and visual needs and provide highly specialized optical services. The IEI has over 90,000 visits annually from a largely low-income, medically underserved patient population and provides charitable services and outreach programs through its foundation to assist people in need. For more information about the Illinois Eye Institute, visit www.illinoiseyeinstitute.com. SOURCE Illinois Eye Institute

Chicago Now: Check out these recent Axelson Center awardees!

May 24, 2010

On May 13, 2010, another set of area nonprofit organizations was recognized for their exceptional performance – not only in programming, but in the management and leadership they exercise in their organizations. 

Erie Family Health Center and The Bridge were the winners of the 2010 Alford-Axelson Award for Nonprofit Managerial Excellence – offered since 2002 by the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management. 

The award was created to honor and continue the legacy of Nils G. Axelson, a devoted community healthcare leader and visionary, and Jimmie R. Alford, a contemporary leading thinker and practitioner in the nonprofit arena.   Each organization received a $5K unrestricted cash grant – Erie in the large organization category, and the Bridge in the small category.  This year’s sponsor, ShoreBank, has been a supporter of the Alford-Axelson award from its inception.

Erie Family Health Center provides high-quality, culturally sensitive health care to the Chicago area’s most vulnerable citizens, regardless of ability to pay.  Each year, approximately 30,000 underinsured and uninsured Chicagoans – the majority of whom are from low-income Hispanic families – benefit from Erie Family Health Center’s services. 

The Bridge has, for over 45 years, helped young people and their families to achieve social and emotional health. The Bridge serves six townships in Northwest Suburban Cook County, and provides an array of individual, family and group services. 

This year, a new award – for excellent emerging organizations – was also launched to recognize an excellent organization that was no more than 10 years old, with 10 or fewer staff, and an operating budget of $750K or less.  This year’s winner – the Family Defense Center – was awarded a package of pro bono capacity-building services (valued at $50K) and a $2500 unrestricted cash grant.

Would Reform Reshape Health Programs for Chicago’s Poor?

February 5, 2010- Levenfeld Pearlstein is pleased to announce that, for the third consecutive year, it has awarded charitable grants totaling $50,000 to two worthy Chicago community organizations.  The firm made a grant to the Erie Family Health Center and a grant to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, as part of its Corporate Contributions Program.  Launched in 2007, the Corporate Contributions Program is part of a broader civic and social responsibility initiative that Levenfeld Pearlstein has undertaken since its founding in 1999.

At Levenfeld Pearlstein, we believe that doing right and doing well are inseparable and that it is our obligation to help others.  Our commitment to corporate social responsibility and sustainability is serious and reflects our values and culture as a firm.  Not-for-profit organizations have been particularly hard hit by the challenging economy, and the firm felt that it was extremely import to continue our Corporate Contributions Program, regardless of economic conditions. The commitment to bettering the communities in which we work and live is tightly woven into the fabric of Levenfeld Pearlstein, and to halt our program would go against the principles on which our firm was founded.

Levenfeld Pearlstein’s grant to the Erie Family Health Center represents the firm’s third year of support for Erie’s school-based clinic at Ryerson Elementary School, which serves some of Chicago’s lowest-income communities.  The grant will fully fund the continuation of integrated mental health services, community, and education programs, providing students with direct access to mental health services.  This will include an on-site licensed clinical social worker to provide behavioral services, teacher and staff training, and outreach to parents and the community.  Erie Family Health Center seeks to address the immediate needs of children, give them the tools they need to address their challenges, and provide enhanced intervention to improve the quality of their lives.

Levenfeld Pearlstein’s grant to the Greater Chicago Food Depository represents an expansion of the support that the firm has provided to GCFD for the past eight years as a sponsor of the organization’s Commercial Real Estate Awards Dinner.  Our grant specifically provides funding to the Food Depository’s Chicago’s Community Kitchens (CKK) program, which provides job-training programs in the food service industry for unemployed, under-employed and welfare-to-work adults.  The program has already graduated more than 600 students.  Additionally, the students in the program prepare meals for more that 2,500 children per day as part of GCFD’s Kids Café program.  CKK is fully funded by grants and individual contributions – it receives no state or other governmental funding.

More information about Erie Family Health Center is available at http://www.eriefamilyhealth.org/, and for more information on the Greater Chicago Food Depository visit www.chicagosfoodbank.org.

Sharing Smiles: Community workers discuss ways to improve Chicago’s oral health
Written by Lisa Owad
January 27, 2010

Chicago community health workers gathered Wednesday to address the lack of oral health care facing their clientele.

The Sharing Smiles Roundtable discussed the lack of preventative care and financing for oral health with organizations including Advocate Health Care, Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago and Community Health.

The average child at Erie Family Dental clinics has five to six cavities on their visits, according to Dr. Lee Francis, president and CEO of Erie Family Health Center, which hosted the seminar and has several locations in Chicago. And those who live in poverty, both children and adults, suffer more than twice the amount of tooth decay.

Francis called oral health “one of the biggest challenges in public health that exists today.” While oral health care reform may not be at the forefront of the health care debate, problems of access and affordability plague many people with little or no dental insurance. Children are 2.6 times more likely to lack dental insurance than health insurance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Roundtable gave community workers a chance to learn about good oral health practices, as well as places where their community members could get help.

Dr. Ghassan Souri, vice president of oral health services at Erie Family Health Care, spoke of the importance of early tooth decay prevention, especially tooth decay related to nursing bottles. “It requires a tremendous amount of treatment, and very aggressive, comprehensive treatments,” Souri said. “If (the babies) wake up at night, only [give them] water. No juice, no milk.”

Oral health care can also affect a person’s overall health. Diabetes, heart disease and low birth weight are all linked to poor oral health. “When we work on someone’s mouth, we make the rest of them healthy,” said Francis.

Some of the participants at the Roundtable shared personal experiences with problems accessing affordable oral health care.

“I have dental insurance, but it doesn’t cover enough. I end up spending too much money, so I still avoid going to the dentist,” said Janece Simmons, a Roundtable participant from the West Humboldt Park Development Council.

Treating a Community’s Health Needs That Reform May Not Fix

Written by James Warren
December 3, 2009

A private security guard ambles across a health clinic’s crowded waiting area toward the bathroom. A 3-year-old boy, seeing him wearing the same blue shirt as a Chicago police officer and heading the child’s way, fearfully shouts, “No! No!”

His mother reassures him, “He’s not coming for you,” and he calms down. It’s just one example of the cultural challenges at Erie Family Health Center, 2750 West North Avenue, which make the primary tasks more complex, the accomplishments more notable.

This is Humboldt Park, a universe away from the fancy A-list medical complexes like Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the University of Chicago Medical Center and Rush University Medical Center. There is gentrification to the east, but the West Side area has dollar stores rather than boutiques, and dingy two- and three-flats rather than upscale condos. It is primarily Latino, with a high number of H.I.V.-related deaths and high infant mortality rates. Widespread illiteracy requires that patient satisfaction forms show images of five faces, from happy to sad, to check off.

My multiple visits underscore how committed professionals help privately run Erie provide high-quality, inexpensive services tailored to the needs of their patients: H.I.V., prenatal care, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension and, most intriguingly, dental care. The latter is perhaps the most significant unmet health need for American children, and one largely absent from the debate in Washington over health care reform.

For sure, the issue is relevant at Erie. About 36 percent of its 30,000 patients at nine Chicago locations, mostly on the West and North Sides, are uninsured. If they meet the legislation’s proposed income guidelines (less than twice the federal poverty level for a family of four, or roughly $44,000), the charge for a medical visit is $30. If patients return for care within 30 days, it is $10. If they can’t pay, they are not turned away. A subsequent bill is sent, but Erie, which competes for federal money to help offset costs of caring for the uninsured, won’t contact a collection agency.

The two-story clinic in Humboldt Park, until the mid-1980s, housed a Walgreen’s on the first floor and doctors’ offices upstairs when the clientele was predominantly white and Eastern European. But the neighborhood changed, and by the ’80s, gangs were rampant and the infant mortality rate was akin to that of a developing country, at 17 per 1,000 live births, said Dr. Lee Francis, the president and chief executive officer of Erie. Now the rate is down to about 8 per 1,000 live births.

Erie is among more than 1,200 federally qualified health centers nationwide, which care for about 20 million patients at 7,000 sites.

The center is at the forefront of electronic record-keeping, which includes about 100 medical and financial measures, like tracking doctors’ performances, doctor productivity and revenue per visit. It uses AmeriCorps volunteers to educate the community and employs 15 medical professionals, including a midwife and an H.I.V. specialist. Amy Valukas, the outreach director and a daughter of a prominent Chicago lawyer, oversees community meetings on accountability, nutrition and obesity, notably monitoring if patients are taking their medications and showing up for appointments.

Rare for a neighborhood center, there is a state-of-the-art dental clinic with two full-time dentists. The clinic is run by a Syrian immigrant, Dr. Ghassan Souri, who was lured by Dr. Francis, an Amherst College graduate and onetime union activist at Cook County Hospital.

The Medicaid reimbursement rate for private dentists in Illinois is so low that most don’t deal with Medicaid patients. Erie gets more — an average of $93 per patient from the state because of the heavy load of Medicaid patients; still, its cost is $130. It thus loses money but forges on, knowing bad teeth can lead to preterm labor, low birth weight and diabetes, among other ills.

Dr. Souri juggles work here with a suburban practice and routinely sees 2- and 3-year-olds with as many as 20 cavities. On a day I visited, he dealt with a boy, 6, who needed four fillings because he drank too much soda, and a girl, 7, who had 10 cavities.

Ultimately, Erie helps you understand the limits of the health care measures that Congress is wrangling over. There may be money for bricks-and-mortar expansion of such clinics and to encourage training of health professionals, but even with insurance, the economic stresses that contribute to poor health remain. Reform won’t change poverty, inadequate housing or a lack of education. Insurance won’t prompt Dr. Souri’s patients, one-third of whom miss appointments, to show up on time.

But clinics like this seem poised to be part of the overall solution. Even if a small child freaks out at the sight of a powder-blue shirt, there is reason to check the smiley face at the reception desk.

The importance of primary-care – how one clinic serves Chicago’s communities

Written by: Christiana Roach
November 4, 2009

Patients today rarely see the same physician for their primary-care, particularly if they’re uninsured or covered through Medicare.  It’s not a lack of physicians, it’s a lack of compensation.  Specialists perform procedures (colonoscopies, surgeries, etc.) and are compensated at a rate twice that of primary-care physicians.  When graduation day brings with it over $100,000 of steadily increasing debt, there may not seem much of a choice to make.

However, we need primary-care physicians.  Communities need clinics and offices where they know they’ll be seen within a day or two, where their practitioner is a familiar face who knows their history.  Without the constancy and security of these centers, people put off seeing a doctor for minor complaints, don’t go in for regular exams, and often wind up in Urgent Care or the Emergency Room.  That’s why centers like Erie Family Health Center are so vital to the communities they serve.  Founded in 1957 and staffed by volunteer physicians from Northwestern Hospital, Erie has grown to include 9 Chicago locations, the newest at 4745 N. Kedzie Ave.  Measuring over 8,500 square feet, Erie Helping Hands is twice the size of the clinic it replaces next door.  Designed around the needs of its patients, the facility provides 17, comfortably appointed  exam rooms, state-of-the-art technology such as electronic record keeping, spacious halls and wait rooms, and a friendly staff, one willing to give up their weekend putting in the finishing touches rather than delay patient appointments.   Services offered include behavioral health counseling, prenatal care, pediatric care, and health and wellness checkups.  Dental care will continue to be provided next door, at the clinic’s previous location.

“This move is a validation of Erie’s commitment to providing quality care to our patients and provides a sense of pride in our center as a community project,” said Nori Santiago, Manager of Clinical Operations at Erie Helping Hands. She adds,”A dreary, dull environment can have such a depressing effect..” 

LIke other Erie Family Health Centers, Erie Helping Hands insists on continuity of care for its patients, assigning them their own health practitioner from Day 1.  For example, because Erie is still affilliated with Northwestern Hospital, practitioners involved in a woman’s prenatal care are able to keep appraised of her condition when she is admitted for delivery, then see her and her child after discharge.  This type of continuity provides the patient better care, helps ensure appointments are made and kept, and establishes a close relationship between patient and healthgiver.   Patients are treated equally, regardless of their insurance or ability to pay.  Outreach and education programs are other ways through which Erie’s staff shows its concern for the health of its community.

If you’re interested in seeking healthcare at an Erie Family Health Center, you can find one closest to you by phoning 312.666.3494 or by visiting their website: www.eriefamilyhealth.org/.  Appointments are generally available within 1 to 5 days (2  days being the average) – a miracle when you consider most Medicare patients must schedule appointments weeks in advance.

To take a look at the process involved in pulling together Erie’s new center, watch the video below or go to: www.vimeo.com/6857889.  It’s a nicely put together overview of  how Erie Helping Hands went from design to conception.

Helping Hands Video from Erie Family Health Center on Vimeo.

If you’re interested in learning more about Erie and its mission, you can read an interview I conducted with Dr. Lee Francis, Erie Health’s President and CEO, found through this link:  www.examiner.com/x-7503-Chicago-Health-Care-Examiner~y2009m8d5-Lowcost-healthcare-101-an-interview-with-Erie-Family-Health-Center.

Appeared in the Chicago Examiner on August 5, 2009

Low-cost Health Care 101: an Interview with Erie Family Health Center

By Christiana Roach

Chicagoans are fortunate in the number of low or no cost clinics serving our community.  One of these is Erie Family Health Center.  Erie began in 1957 as a volunteer clinic run by physicians from Northwestern Memorial Hospital.  Originally intended to serve elderly immigrants, Erie now serves patients of all ages at 9 locations in West and Northwest Chicago.  Through Erie, patients receive comprehensive health care – from dental  to maternity to HIV/AIDS  treatment – and can rely on the same physician following their case, ensuring continuity of care regardless of the patient’s income or ability to pay.  Following is a Q&A session with Dr. Lee Francis, Erie Health’s President and CEO.

Appeared in EXTRA on July 23, 2009

Grand Opening of Erie Clemente Wildcats Student Health Center

The opening of the Erie Clemente Wildcats Student Health Center marks another milestone for the Erie Family Health Center. The organization now has 10 sites around the West and Northwest side of Chicago, including three elementary school-based locations, two dental centers and the newest addition, a high school-based center.

Erie Clemente staff at work (left to right): Jazlin Flecha, Rosa Herrera, and Tiosha Goss

Erie Clemente is located on the second floor of Roberto Clemente Community Academy, 1147 N. Western Ave., and features three exam rooms, a counseling room, lab, office space and a number of other state-of-the-art amenities, including an electronic records keeping system. The health center is opened from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The center is staffed with licensed physicians, nurse practitioners and case managers. Erie Clemente bilingual staff provides the following services to its patients: acute care, school and sports physicals, immunizations, lab services, rapid HIV testing, reproductive health services and counseling services. The counseling services are available through a partnership with Youth Guidance, an organization that creates and implements school-based programs.

“Our goal is to remove any barriers to health care,” said Tiosha Goss, school and oral health coordinator. “The center will provide healthcare to students without interfering with their education by allowing them to see Erie providers onsite.

An added benefit to students utilizing Erie as their healthcare provider is the long-term connection with the organization. Once an individual becomes an Erie patient, they can visit any of the other centers. In the case of Clemente students, upon leaving the high school, they are automatically a part of Erie’s health network and can utilize the adult patient care centers. This provides individuals with a comprehensive set of health care services that spans a lifetime.

“We are honored to help improve access to quality, affordable health care for Clemente students,” said Amy Valukas, director of School Health and Health Promotion. “Our mission is to provide accessible, affordable and high quality health care for those in need. Many of the most vulnerable are kids,” Valukas added.

The $130,000 grant from Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation helped to support the renovation of Erie Clemente, which became fully operational on July 1.