Holiday Hours

Dear Patients,

Please be aware that we will be closed New Years Eve day and New Years Day (12/31 - 1/1). We will return 1/2/13.

Check Out the New CHC Facility Video

The Community Health Center Welcomes our New Medicare Patients!

We have made the commitment: we will serve Medicare Part B patients. Think of this as our electronic sign on the door. With all the changes going on in Washington, increasing health care costs, and more and more doctors choosing not to accept Medicare patients, many seniors are having a hard time getting access to quality health care. At the Community Health Center, we are committed to serving seniors and making sure they have the basic medical care they need to stay healthy and manage chronic diseases.

If your are looking for an appointment, you can apply online on our website, or by calling our office at 678-398-6548. When calling, ask for Allison. She is our dedicated staff person who serves Medicare patients. If she is not available, any of our wonderful staff members can answer your questions and get your appointment scheduled.

We also have many other resources for Medicare patients including our Medicare Information Center, where you can learn basic information about the Medicare health insruance plan provided by the government. This part of our website is great for seniors wishing to learn more about their health care or children and family members of Medicare patients looking for answers to help their loved ones.

The Community Health Center also provides free Welcome to Medicare and Medicare Annual Wellness Visits. These free appointments ( 1 per Medicare patient, per year) are designed to help patients plan their healthcare needs and get into habits that promote health and wellness so that seniors can continue to have active and fullfilling lives in their later years. These appointments are also a perfect opportunity for patients to discuss Medicare's other free preventative services such as pelvic exams and cholesterol levels. 

Welcome Medicare patients and thanks for choosing the Community Health Center for your health care needs.

New Tool for Mothers to Be to Help Them and Their Babies Stay Healthy

text4baby is a new tool for expectant mothers and providing health information to mothers about their health during pregnancy and the health of their babies via their cell phones. The service is sponsored by Johnson and Johnson and is free to use.

"Women will receive about three text messages per week with accurate and timely health information about a variety of topics, ranging from prenatal care to mental health to immunization, as well as resources such as reminders of milestone appointments, until the baby’s first birthday."1

Even despite having the best healthcare technology in the world, the US still sees about 500,000 premature births and 28,000 infant deaths a year. Many contributing factors to these statistics include poverty, low access to health care and bad health habits. text4baby and similar initiatives believe that better access to health information will lower those numbers and help more women have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.

For more information, read "New Moms Get Advice Via Texting" by Deesha Patel from Georgia Health News.

To sign up for the service visit www.text4baby.org.

Healthcare Law Expands Medicaid Coverage in GA: Governor Deal Says "Lets Wait"

The Supreme Court ruled on June 28th that the "Affordable Care Act", the health care legislation sponsored by President Obama, is constitutional and will go into effect as planned, unless it is overturned by the legislature after the election this fall. Another ruling handed down in the decision that had less press but also has far reaching consequences is the ruling on the expansion of Medicaid in the 50 States. The law expands Medicaid coverage to more than 650,000 people in GA. Medicaid in GA covers about 1.7 million people today. The Federal government has promised to pay 100% of the cost of bringing the extra people onto Medicaid for the first 3 years of the program and then up to 90% thereafter. 

The Supreme Court ruling focused on the federal governments claim that it can force the states to expand their Medicaid programs and accept the new money, or else if the States do not expand their Medicaid programs, the federal government would take away Medicare money for State's current programs. The Court ruled that the federal government could not withhold Medicaid money from the States for not expanding their programs, deeming that coercion.

Governor Deal announced last week that GA would "wait and see" what the election in November brought. If congress or the white house switches parties in the election, it has been made known quite publicly that the Affordable Care Act would be overturned and a new healthcare program created. The Governor has said that he believes it is prudent to wait and see what happens, instead of spending tax payers dollars now to expand a program that may be thrown out at the beginning of the year.

Georgia health care providers are divided on whether or not the expansion of Medicaid would be a good thing for GA. Last year alone, GA hospitals lost 1.5 billion dollars treating people without insurance and who could not afford to pay their healthcare bills. On top of that, Medicare and Medicaid are implementing programs to cut costs and payments to doctors and hospitals by $155 billion over the next 10 years. Many rural hospitals worry that if payments are being cut without the expansion of more Medicaid (insurance) patients, it may be catastrophic for their business. Others point to rising suspicions, which have not been dispelled that the US government in time, will not be able to pay for all the services it currently provides. This means that hospitals and doctors will be required to take less money, see more people, and have a weaker and weaker guarantee that they will get paid at all.

Will expansion of Medicaid be good for GA or will it add more stress to an already beleaguered healthcare system that could ultimately break it? It seems like it will be more waiting for GA and the rest of the nation.

For more in-depth coverage of the situation, read Misty William's and Carrie Teegardin of the AJC article about Georgia Health Care in Limbo.