Featured Grant Story: Lubbock Children's Health Clinic
Lubbock Children's Health Clinic (LCHC) has been meeting the needs of children in the Lubbock community since 1939. Their mission is to provide quality, low cost, comprehensive primary health care to the medically indigent children of Lubbock without regard to the parents' ability to pay. Services such as immunizations, preventative health care/well exams, sick child and infant care, school physicals, sports physicals, CHIP exams, lab work and pharmacy vouchers are provided from two locations in medically under served areas of North and East Lubbock.
Texas leads the nation in uninsured and under insured children. Many children are not receiving the complete series of immunizations required to protect them from vaccine-preventable diseases.
In 2010, LCHC received funds to establish a permanent location in North Lubbock. They were able to develop a medical home for children ages newborn through 18 years old. In 2013, they received funds again and were able to establish another permanent location, this time in East Lubbock. Construction on the East Lubbock location concluded in 2015, as did an expansion on the North Lubbock location. The new expansion for the North Lubbock location allowed LCHC to have additional office space and to open an area for the South Plains Lions Club eyeglasses program. Currently, they have two permanent locations in North and East Lubbock to provide a medical home for the children of Lubbock and surrounding counties.
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center pediatric nurses provide after hours triage services for the LCHC. The clinics maintain business hours, Monday through Friday and are staffed with a nurse practitioner to provide preventative and acute healthcare to children. LCHC provides services for walk-in sick visits, immunizations for children 2 years old and up, physicals and follow-up visits for chronic or acute problems. Additionally, during the back to school months, late July and August, LCHC offers extended hours for physicals and immunizations to accommodate families who may have difficulty scheduling an appointment due to work or family obligations. LCHC is also able to provide pharmacy services at a reduced cost for their patients.
In 2017, LCHC provided 9,645 medical services to 7,593 patients, and 2,538 first time patients. The Community Foundation of West Texas has supported LCHC with money for pharmacy and laboratory services for unfunded patients in the past few years. The funds were used to provide metered dose inhalers for children with asthma, expensive antibiotics for children with unresolved ear infections, children with perforated tympanic membranes requiring expensive ear drops, and antibiotics to treat pneumonia. LCHC has done a great deal of work in the community, with numbers showing an increase in patient growth of 5% to 7% in the past 3 years.
To learn more about Lubbock Children's Health Clinic please visit them online at www.lchclubbock.org or at their Facebook page.
