Expanding Child Health & Dental Services

Background

The Ibn Sina Foundation was created in 2001 to bridge the growing gap between healthcare needs of a rapidly expanding population of ethnic minorities and underserved communities in Houston, and the ability of existing public institutions to meet its needs. The Foundation’s mission is to ensure the health of the community by providing integrated preventive and primary care in a clinical setting through dissemination and application of health related knowledge, thereby enhancing the quality of life of future generations.

Our patients are asked to pay a small fee of $25 per visit. A sliding scale is available if the fee cannot be met. A patient fund is also available for those patients who are unable to pay any portion of the fee. Our patients receive free medications after each visit via our sample program with local doctor’s offices and hospitals.

New for 2007-2008

Ibn Sina Foundation’s new $1.8 million Community Medical Center in Southwest Houston is located in one of Houston’s most poverty-stricken communities with over 70 different nationalities. Additionally, over 100,000 hurricane-affected individuals who are now permanent residents of Houston have settled in Southwest Houston and are now patients of Ibn Sina’s new Community Medical Center.

The Center opened in March 2007 and is one of the busiest medical centers in Houston with 50-60 patients per day being treated. The Center is unique in Houston, and across the country, because it provides rare specialty medicine clinics for Houston’s uninsured families such as gynecology, pediatrics, cardiovascular disease and prevention, mental health, ophthalmology, imaging, orthopedics as well as dentistry and primary care services. Costs are kept to a minimum because specialty medicine physicians provide their time (part-time) free of charge.

Meeting the Need

Most of the time, these types of “specialty medicine” clinics are usually offered only at private practice clinics which are usually quite expensive if one does not have health insurance. Thus, other than the local emergency center, there are no other medical clinics in Southwest Houston offering comprehensive medical and dental care to the uninsured-adults and children. Because the new center has allowed the expansion of our most demanding clinics such as dentistry, gynecology and pediatrics, we have seen our patient numbers increase dramatically in less than 12 months.

The need that Ibn Sina’s new medical center is meeting is tremendous. One of the many services Ibn Sina Foundation’s new medical center provides Houston is less crowded emergency rooms so that only the most critical are treated on site versus primary care visits, which can cost double or triple in an emergency center. Less crowded emergency rooms also provide an economic advantage to the city, state and federal government by keeping uncompensated hospital expenses at lower levels.

Impact of the Program

This year, Ibn Sina Foundation Clinics are working to to facilitate more than 15,000 out patient visits with comprehensive primary care, dentistry, immunization, ophthalmology and radiology services for the young children on the southwest Houston area.

For More Information Regarding This Article Contact:
Sharon Flournoy , Regional Contract Coordinator, Contract Management Branch
ph. 903.232.3293