HispanicBusiness

left out truly have very few options. And so, although I am supporter of the Affordable Care Act, because the undocumented are being left out of the law and will not be brought into it I think even if there's immigration reform, we're going to have a continued population that is going to have very, very few options when it comes to access to health care.

You previously ran the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. What new skills have you had to develop to succeed at Casa de Salud?

I have had to figure out a lot more about how health care runs since I had no health care experience. I had management experience, but none in health care. And that has been an ongoing education for me. Also, I had a staff of two at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and now I have a staff of 25. So managing a large, passionate staff in an operation that has a lot of moving parts and in a field that is constantly changing has really tested my ability to manage the staff effectively and get results. And luckily, the staff has helped me succeed. The staff has really been the reason that Casa de Salud has been successful.

To what extent does Casa de Salud receive funding assistance from the state and federal government, private foundations and companies?

We receive no assistance from state or federal government, and we receive very little corporate support. The vast majority of our funding comes from private foundations, especially local and regional, and then a smaller piece of our funding comes from the patient fees that we do charge.

That does present a challenge to us because we are so heavily leveraged into foundation funding, and foundations, although they love the work that we're doing -- of course, no foundation is built to simply sustain a particular organization. And so it does present a challenge for us moving forward, given that our revenue portfolio is so heavily focused on foundations, to find additional sources of funding to maintain our operation keep it robust.

How accessible is good health care for Latinos in the St. Louis area from a standpoint of cost and access?

Access and cost are major barriers for the Latino community in the St. Louis region. You're talking about a population that is the working poor, and so they are very cost sensitive. Access is even worse, especially when you're talking about those who are undocumented. So they don't have access to health insurance. Even going to a facility to seek treatment puts them at potential danger of being deported. And so oftentimes what happens is that the person does not come in to be seen until they have reached a stage where they need to be seen at an emergency room.

That's a key area where Casa has filled, where we offer these services that can get a person in so that we can try and get them treated before we get to a point where the person needs to have treatment for a serious illness or something that has been allowed to become exacerbated.

What kind of health care problems does Casa de Salud deal with that are not commonly found at other low-income community health clinics or the St. Louis area's other major clinics and hospitals?

I'm not sure that we see anything significantly different. If there's anything different, I would say that we probably have more young men come in to see us than you might see at other clinics, particularly because of work injuries that they sustain, that they don't have insurance to cover and that they need to get back on the job as quickly as possible so that they continue to put food on the table for themselves and their families. So I think we do see perhaps a more disproportionate share of young men.

But in terms of general diseases and conditions, I think that we see a lot of what other clinics see. For us really it is truly an access issue, and so that's why we focus on the access piece of being open seven days a week, of having evening hours on occasion. We try and create a space where the person can get to us, where in some cases the system might not be built for them to be able to have the opportunity to seek treatment.

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