Community Benefit – Community Impact

Bringing Healthcare to the Community

Community clinics enable the most vulnerable members of our communities to obtain affordable, high-quality primary care services. This benefits our patients and their communities.

The persistence of racial and ethnic health disparities, the effects of poverty, lack of insurance as well as little access to good nutrition mean that our patients experience high rates of chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes. Many patients have more than one chronic illness.

Access to Primary Care

Access to primary care reduces pressure on already overcrowded emergency rooms and ensures that chronic illness is managed and treated before it becomes life-threatening. This reduces pressure on already overcrowded emergency rooms and means that people take fewer illness-related days off work.

Access to Preventative Care

Access to preventive care ensures that people are treated in the appropriate setting, not in the emergency department. Care at Coalition clinics is affordable, which means that patients avoid costly hospital bills that often become bad debt.

A Healthier Community

Communities benefit because people who would otherwise go without care are treated and live healthier lives. They are able to go to work. Precious community resources are put to their best use when people obtain care in the appropriate setting and the effects of lack of insurance are mitigated.

How Communities are Impacted

By coming together in collaboration, the clinics are able to leverage community resources to provide primary care, specialty care and affordable medications to low income people without medical insurance. The Coalition clinics have become the catalyst of this community’s efforts to take care of its residents. Many providers volunteer their time to treat patients for free at the clinics.

Local foundations, businesses, churches and individuals give money and resources to support the work of these clinics. All of the hospital systems and Multnomah County Health Department offer access to their resources to support the work of the clinics in varying degrees.

It is through these contributions that the Coalition clinics are able to cut costs and provide high quality patient care with precious resources.

The number of patient visits and the total amount of federal funds and community resources that the clinics make available each year make the Coalition and its member clinics a major player in regional health care. The Coalition presents a collective social and political voice on health care issues for the vulnerable individuals and families we support.