Federal Grant Helps Detroit Open Clinic To Bolster Primary Care System

A new primary care clinic, called the Community Health and Social Services Center, Midtown, opened in Detroit this week as part of an effort to add six such clinics in the metro area, the Detroit News reports. Detroit health officials hope that opening new clinics will help "ease the burden" on the area's hospitals, which have been caring for the city's uninsured or underinsured. The clinic's opening occurs at a "critical time," helping to restore a "network of basic medical centers that unraveled in recent years." Over the past four years, almost half of the city's 32 primary care centers closed because of "major cuts in Medicaid and Medicare," the News reports. The closings "forced" city residents -- 250,000 of whom have "inadequate health care coverage" -- to "put off routine health care or travel to find it," often going to emergency rooms and "causing financial strain on hospitals and increasing waiting times," the News reports. Using grants from HHS' Bureau of Primary Health Care, Detroit area health leaders plan to increase health services in the city by 35% and bring the total number of primary care centers in the area to 23. The grants are part of the Bush administration's $1.48 billion initiative to build 1,200 centers nationwide and "double the number of patients served in these clinics to 22 million" (Webster, Detroit News, 1/24).