BUILDING A HEALTHY COMMUNITY

BUILDING A HEALTHY COMMUNITY

Regional Health Commission rescued health care for the needy, but has more work to do

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By Robert Joiner, Beacon staff

Posted 10:29 am Mon., 9.12.11

When the St. Louis Regional Health Commission was set up a decade ago, one of its priorities was to find ways to pump life into the area's imploding medical care system for the needy. Fragmented and underfunded, that system had just lost its last public hospital and had no effective way of delivering basic care to tens of thousands of vulnerable residents in St. Louis and St. Louis County. As the commission prepares to mark its 10th anniversary, some acknowledge that the agency still has plenty of work to do. But they also point to strides made to improve health-care access for those least able to pay for the services. The improvements have included: Expanding primary and specialty care to an additional 120,000 people annually since 2008 Diverting an estimated 75,000 costly and needless emergency room visits each year Setting up the Integrated Health Network to boost coordination among community health centers Connecting an estimated 30,000 residents to a continuum of care through primary-care providers in health centers Opening a psychiatric stabilization center for short-term emergency care at the Metropolitan Psychiatric Center on Delmar Boulevard.