Bond Community Health Center.

Ultimately if funding for the Bond Community Health Center were to cease there would be a reduction in staff, a less healthy community, increased patient wait time, as well as increased appointment wait times, staff burnout, overcrowding in wait rooms with impatient patients and patients waiting till their illnesses become life threatening to seek treatment—to say the least.

So why would the question of whether or not to cut or decrease funding even come to mind? To cut funding would mean to go against our great president’s initiative to increase access to healthcare for America’s uninsured and underserved. And we wouldn’t want to do that, now would we?

Let’s take a closer look into just why cutting funding for the BCHC is utter foolishness.

Numbers. The one thing local, state and national officials cannot and, most of the time, do not ignore are the figures.

According to J.R. Richards, CEO of the BCHC , the center currently serves 8,050 Leon County residences, 5,649 of which are uninsured. The latest figures those shows that these 8,050 residences make 19,320 visits to the center, and 14,122 of those visits are uninsured. Of those 14,122 uninsured visits, at a rate of $80 per visit, Leon County pays for 4,117 of them.

According to Richards 5,649 uninsured residences would be without preventive primary healthcare and the center would have to cut it’s services to a minimum of 9,253 visits.

Speaking of things that make you go hmmm? If funding were cut, where would that money be put to use? What would be some of the pro’s in a situation like this? And can the Board of County Commissioners really say that the pro’s outweigh the con’s?

Getting back to the numbers, the Women’s and Children’s Health program, currently funded by the county, will be one of the first to get canned if the BCHC lost funding.

With annual funding of $351,000 for women and children’s health services the BCHC provided services to 375 prenatal patients and 1,470 children in 2006. The end result—higher infant mortality rates, (and by the way the current local infant mortality rate is sky rocketing), and in the words of Richards, “…we will, instead of eliminating barriers to healthcare, create them .”Not convinced yet?

To the indigent, uninsured, underinsured and underserved citizens of Southside Tallahassee the BCHC is a necessity.

Richardson said if funding is cut the operating hours of the center would immediately reduce, forcing the center to close earlier and not be open at all on the weekends.

This means the optimal time for working mothers and fathers to bring their children to the clinics would now be obsolete. The end result—an opportunity for innocent children to get the healthcare they deserve would simply be a memory.

In addition to the aforementioned, hospital emergency rooms could be effected and see some overcrowding if funding is cut, HIV/AIDS programs that serve over 407 residence could be cut and a diabetes program that serves 1,320, 327 of which are uninsured, could be cut.

It’s the duty of the Leon County Commission to serve their community to the best of their abilities. Well if they consider cutting the funding from the Bond Community Health Center a way to better serve the community, I beg to differ.

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