LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – Southwest Louisiana Center for Health Services in Lake Charles is a local nonprofit offering patients everything from medical to dental and even mental health services. The president and CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers is touring facilities nationwide and stopped by our local center today.

“Much of what we have in our health system is broken, but what we do in community health centers is we put it back together,” said Dr. Kyu Rhee, president and CEO of NACHC. “The disparities that racial and ethnic communities suffer, the disparities that rural communities suffer, the disparities that marginalized groups and low socioeconomic status groups suffer. These are all populations that community health centers are built for.”

Community health centers are nonprofit, patient-governed organizations that provide high-quality, comprehensive primary health care to America’s medically underserved communities, serving all patients regardless of income or insurance status.

“I don’t think everyone understands the dynamics of what a community health center really brings to a community,” SWLA Center for Health Services Director Diana Ross said. “If an individual does not have insurance, then they can come here and we offer them a sliding fee scale. In Joe’s case, he had Medicaid and of course, he turns 65. So Medicare kicks in. So in other words, he literally paid nothing to have all of his dental work done here at the center.”

Community health centers serve one in 11 people nationwide. In 2021, health centers marked the historic milestone of serving 30 million patients.

“As an internist and as a pediatrician, you come to me first. My job is to prevent you from going to the emergency room or being hospitalized. My job is to prevent you from getting so sick where you need those costly resources, and you’re in a hospital overnight and that hospitalization could cost you $20, $30,000,” Dr. Rhee said.

Since their inception in the 1960s, health centers are innovators, healers and problem solvers that reach beyond the walls of the conventional healthcare delivery system to prevent illness and address the social drivers that may cause poor health – diet, nutrition, mental illness or homelessness.

“Trust is a key component. Health centers exist because they have been trusted in those communities for over nearly six decades, and that trust is the core of healthcare,” Rhee said.

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