Annie-Care: Providing Preventive Services to Patients in Community Health Centers

Annie Neasman, a nurse and chief executive of the Jessie Trice Community Health Center in Miami, FL., recently shared with us her thoughts as she walks the hallways of the community health center and sees the people who are cared for there. Jessie Trice serves more than 30,000 people, who made more than 120,000 visits to the center last year. From pre-natal care to primary care for adults to special services for the elderly, the Jessie Trice Center provides care regardless of a person’s ability to pay.

Annie is proud of the health center’s efforts in keeping the residents of the community well. She says the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform law, has made it possible for so many more of them to get the preventive care they need to maintain their health and avoid worsening conditions.

“We have seen our Medicare population be able to go in and get preventive services without having to pay those co-payments and those deductibles,” she says. The Affordable Care Act “has impacted the lives of those individuals who now don’t have to wait because they don’t have the co-payment to get a mammogram … [or] those individuals who wait and say, ‘I’m not gonna go get that flu shot because it’s gonna cost me $20 up front.’ And these have been real life stories … at the Jesse Trice Community Health Center.”

“The Affordable Care Act,” Annie says, “allows us to make sure that patients are treated early by being able to get preventive services and by treating patients early in a primary care setting and not going to the emergency room. In the long run that’s going to help all communities because the economic impact will be less.”

The community center is partly funded by grants in the Affordable Care Act.

Do you have a story like Annie’s? Share it at www.HealthCare.gov/MyCare.