Glendale City Council Approves Community Health Clinic
The Glendale City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to allow not-for-profit health care provider Northeast Community Clinic to operate a community health clinic at a facility that the city owns, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. The city will not charge Edison Pacific Clinic rent for the facility and will install furniture and medical equipment purchased with $98,356 in federal funds. Although two hospitals currently operate in Glendale, EPC will be the first community clinic for residents and will offer care to both the insured and the uninsured and provide vaccinations to local schoolchildren. According to the Daily News, patients who are uninsured will pay on a sliding scale based on their income. NECC Executive Director Christopher Lau said, "We're actually serving the whole spectrum of the community; there wont be any exclusion." Madalyn Blake, director of community development and housing, said that the clinic also would help reduce the number of city residents seeking care in hospital emergency departments, the Daily News reports. City officials said that clinic personnel would include a receptionist, medical assistant and health care provider -- possibly a nurse practitioner, doctor's assistant or a physician completing his or her residency. Initially, the clinic, which is scheduled to open in spring 2005, will be open only part-time, but it will increase to full operation and see about 585 patients per month within a year, according to city officials (Dobuzinskis, Los Angeles Daily News, 5/12).
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