Sept. 15, 2000
A $45,980 grant from the Wyandotte Health Foundation to the Silver City Health Center will fund a monthly free screening clinic for residents of the Argentine community of Kansas City, Kan. The clinic, staffed by medical students and supervised by faculty physicians, will be the major service project of the six Academic Societies.
In 1998, the Department of Internal Medicine purchased the Silver City Health Center in the Argentine community to provide needed medical services to the under-served area and clinical education to KU School of Medicine students.
This is the only KU-owned facility where residents specializing in both internal medicine and pediatrics (med/peds) can treat adults and children in one setting. Candace Moseley, MD, medical director and an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics, staff the center with Andreas Deymann, MD, director of the School's med/peds program.
Eight residents spend half a day each week for four years at the center in fulfillment of their programs' continuity-clinic requirements. They are able to develop their skills while establishing solid physician/patient relationships.
"It benefits the residents greatly," said Candace Moseley, director. "They get out into the community and have a feeling of community and being a part of it."
This unique teaching environment provides members of the Argentine neighborhood with special advantages as well.
"The benefit is that they get the expertise of KU and the backing of KU right in their own community," Moseley said.
Silver City, open every weekday, now offers a sliding fee scale for patients without healthcare coverage. This payment opportunity assists patients who cannot afford medical insurance and who do not qualify for Medicare or Medicaid. The fee scale is based on total household income and the number of family members in a household.
TeleKidCare is another of the many services provided. Computer links to nurses' offices in Emmerson Grade School, William Allen White Elementary and West Middle School enable the doctors to examine area students without a visit to the doctor's office. Physicians can look via cameras, through odoscopes into children's ears, nose and mouth. They can also listen through stethoscopes to the child's heart and lungs. The images and sounds are relayed instantaneously from the school to the center. Doctors treat a variety of ailments this way, from rashes and earaches to sore throats.
Last spring the center began Health Connection, a partnership with Argentine Middle School. This community outreach program sends KU physicians, residents and students into eighth-grade classrooms to talk about health issues. Contests help educate and motivate the students. The same information is then presented to parents in the evenings.
Another of the center's community-service programs provides free prescription drugs to patients in need. Doctor of pharmacology students (Pharm Ds) in conjunction with pharmaceutical companies provide medications at no cost to qualifying patients.
This program is especially important because so many patients are unable to afford the prescriptions that they require, Moseley said. The growing problem is especially prevalent among the older patients.
"Sometimes it comes down to 'Do I eat, or do I pay rent,'" she said.
Jennifer Johnson, medicine and pediatrics intern said that the center's environment had provided her with valuable real-world experience.
"It is a unique primary-care setting in that many of our patients don't have much money," she said. "It gives us the opportunity to think outside of the box in terms of knowing how to treat patients with limited resources."
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The University of Kansas Medical Center