Low-income households will quickly see their medical choices decreased as a result of Texas Youngsters’s Hospital is closing its two Houston healthcare facilities that serve communities in want.
The Facilities for Youngsters and Girls, positioned within the Greenspoint space in north Houston and the placement within the southwest a part of the town, can be closing within the coming months, a hospital spokesperson mentioned not too long ago. The Greenspoint facility at 700 North Sam Houston Parkway West is closing on Dec. 1, and the 9700 Bissonnet St. Suite 1000 W location – which already has stopped accepting new sufferers – will shut on June 30, 2024.
The 2 facilities solely serve sufferers with medical protection by means of the Texas Youngsters’s Well being Plan, which is out there to those that qualify for Medicaid or the federal Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage Program (CHIP). The amenities provide a variety of healthcare companies for youngsters and girls, together with being pregnant care, dentistry, optometry, speech remedy, behavioral well being companies and a pharmacy.
A Texas Youngsters’s spokesperson mentioned in a press release the hospital system is closing The Facilities for Youngsters and Girls as a result of it “recognized a chance to create a special paradigm and care mannequin that may enhance the standard of care and affected person expertise in addition to develop the entry we offer to not solely the particular inhabitants of our Well being Plan households however to all our sufferers and households.”
“Extra particulars are coming,” the spokesperson added, “however this redesigned, optimized mannequin can be larger and higher and can embody many extra places and companies for households to select from. In the end, it will give households extra choices for care by Texas Youngsters’s physicians nearer to residence in all of the communities we serve.”
The assertion from Texas Youngsters’s didn’t handle what number of sufferers, physicians and different workers can be impacted by the closures and whether or not these staff may have the chance to switch to different places inside the hospital system, which relies within the Houston space and in addition operates amenities in Austin and McAllen.
Texas Youngsters’s Well being Plan members will proceed to have the identical protection after the closures, based on data on the hospital system web site, though they might want to discover medical doctors at different places. Impacted sufferers are being matched up with physicians near their houses and may choose different healthcare suppliers inside the community if they need.
A ceaselessly requested questions web page on the Texas Youngsters’s web site says a “restricted variety of sufferers with excessive medical wants” can switch from the Greenspoint location to the southwest Houston middle between Dec. 1 and when the latter facility closes on the finish of June.
Texas Youngsters’s mentioned in its assertion it has “persistently developed and supplied applications and companies that prioritize entry for our most weak affected person populations,” together with by means of its Texas Youngsters’s Well being Plan. The facilities designed to serve plan members, that are closing inside a decade after they opened, are billed on-line as a “new form of medical facility that places every little thing in a single place.”
