RX for Change: Confronting the health care crisis in Kansas

Dec. 6, 2006

By April Middleton

Salina Journal

When it's time, it's time.

But sometimes it can be difficult for an expectant mother to make it across town, much less across a county or two.

Yet some mothers-to-be are doing just that.

A woman from Manhattan and another from Hutchinson drive to Salina for prenatal visits at Salina Family Healthcare Center, and will try to make it here when it's time to deliver.

Why?

"To our knowledge, we are the only clinic doing deliveries for the uninsured," said clinic CEO Marcia Hawkes. "It's obviously not real comfortable, and it's not the ideal, but they have to have somewhere to go."

It's a service the clinic has offered for some time. But the region from which patients are coming has grown.

Hawkes said there are a variety of reasons. One is that there are more people without health insurance. Another is that more people know the clinic provides prenatal care and does deliveries. And, since the clinic began receiving federal funding last year, it cannot limit its area of service.

The center averages about 100 expectant mothers at a time, Hawkes said. So far, it's managing that caseload fine.

"It's something that really could snowball," Hawkes said. "We really have to manage it. Health departments know we are doing it and are referring patients who can't find a local doctor to us."

Some uninsured women receive minimal prenatal care through their health departments and local Women, Infants and Children programs.

When those women are ready to deliver, they go to the local emergency room, and the on-call doctor sees them, Hawkes said.

That is less ideal than women driving a long distance, she said.

"To go without care isn't good, and it's so much better for mom and baby to have a doctor they have been seeing regularly," Hawkes said.

Many of the resident doctors who work at Salina Family Healthcare Center are training to work in rural areas. So having training in delivering babies is invaluable to those doctors, Hawkes said.

"The whole idea is to have these residents ready for every situation they will encounter in those rural settings," she said, "so doing deliveries fits well with what we do for a number of reasons."