Houston's Healthcare ChallengeIn the greater Houston area, too many people are falling through the gaps in our current healthcare system. Children with medically treatable learning disabilities don’t have access to the care they need to stay healthy and focused on their schoolwork so they can succeed in school and life. Uninsured working families are forced to choose between financial ruin and life-saving medical treatments. Children are orphaned because a young mother is lost to a disease that was allowed to escalate beyond control because she didn’t receive the right care in time. And people without medical homes are turning to emergency centers to get primary health care services, running up huge bills that go unpaid and delaying the delivery of emergency care for critically ill patients.
Only 53 percent of Texas employers provide health insurance for their employees – seven percentage points below the national average. Our state leads the nation in uninsured residents, and in Harris County alone, more than 31 percent of our population does not have health insurance. These are the people who depend on Houston’s healthcare safety net. As their ranks increase, the safety net is stretching toward the breaking point. While our state and country search for long-term solutions to the healthcare crisis, our community must come together in the short term to find solutions for our uninsured neighbors. We must find ways to help these people and the millions of others like them get the care they need now. A multifaceted problem, the healthcare crisis requires multifaceted solutions. By working together, we can fix the existing health system and connect patients to the right care at the right place and at the right cost. The Challenge: In the Houston area, 72 percent of the uninsured are employed by small employers who do not offer health care coverage, or whose coverage options are unaffordable. Without access to insurance, and making too much money to qualify for sliding fee base scales in safety-net clinics, these families tend not to get health care on any kind of routine basis. When they do get it, it is through an ER where their true primary as well as chronic conditions are not addressed. Businesses and governments, social agencies and healthcare entities,
neighborhoods and communities -- it’s everyone’s problem.
And everyone benefits when we find solutions that work.
We all have a part to play and there is no time to waste. To address this challenge, Memorial Hermann is expanding our outreach efforts and funding new ways to increase and strengthen the city’s primary care infrastructure, specialty care infrastructure, and the education and outreach to support the effectiveness of each. We believe that by working in collaboration with other healthcare providers, government agencies, business leaders and community stakeholders, we can build an infrastructure for the Houston and Harris County region that will ensure a healthy, productive workforce. We are the Community Benefit Corporation, a subsidiary of Memorial Hermann Healthcare System. We invite you to learn more about what we’re doing to help ensure all greater Houston area residents can receive the healthcare they need. |
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