THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 17, 1996 TAG: 9601170337
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
On Tuesday afternoon, more than two dozen people - parents and children - filled the chairs in the raucous waiting room at the Norfolk Health Department's Little Creek office.
The halls, too, of the Children's Outpatient Center, were an obstacle course of children. Another busy day.
But things changed Tuesday. There were new doctors at the clinic, thanks to a partnership with Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters and Eastern Virginia Medical School.
The arrangement also allows the clinic to continue treating children using Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor.
Because of a major change in the way Medicaid is managed in Hampton Roads, the health department was not eligible to take those patients.
This month, all Medicaid patients in Hampton Roads were put in a health maintenance organization owned by one of four insurance companies that have contract with the state. Ideally, putting the poor into an HMO should provide them with better medical care while saving the state money.
Each client picks a family doctor or is assigned to one from a list provided by his insurance company. That means families on Medicaid couldn't have used the health department's clinic anymore, since the clinic's doctors weren't on the panel of the participating HMOs.
``Many people who were used to finding their health care at the northern end of town would a have gone to other facilities,'' a problem for poor people without good transportation, said Dr. Valerie Stallings, Norfolk's health director.
The doctors at CHKD's Children's Outpatient Center, who also teach in EVMS' pediatrics department, are on the list of all participating insurance companies. Under the new arrangement, the doctors provide their services; the health department provides the nurses. The clinic will offer the same services as any large pediatrics practice, with daytime hours and help on-call overnight.
The clinic will continue seeing children whose families don't have health insurance and those with insurance who find the clinic convenient to use. by CNB