Conversation with David Lee, Director, APLA Health Center, CDU / MLK Medical Campus( continued)
our wraparound services are still focused on HIV positive individuals.”
Face it, in a close-knit community like the South LA, you can’ t kick anyone to the curb without a lot of people finding out and complaining. As people of color, low-income or not, certainly many residents already have experienced – and kind of expect – difficulties receiving quality service.“ That’ s why our dental clinic and food bank were started because some dentists will refuse to see HIV positive patients. And that was the niche that we were trying to serve, especially the patients at the Oasis clinic or the patients at Watts Health Care down the street, and other providers in the neighborhood that focused on HIV. We’ re a primary care center now. If somebody needs something more, like an orthopedic specialist, our doctors will refer them to one in the community. little slow, because hiring medical staff has been a little bit of a challenge. I feel like we do not have enough providers in the community. It is a supply and demand issue.”
In this era of rising costs for services, APLA’ s ability to serve the gamut of community residents is a mixed bag, bucking the trend of rising costs.“ I think we’ re a little bit more insulated from it since we are a federally designated health center, Lee stated. A lot of our patients are Medi- Cal covered individuals. It probably impacts the insurance provider more than us directly. But, you know, Medicaid is a public insurance program, so it impacts us all,” he observed.
Who’ s on staff at APLA?“ As a full-service medical provider, we have medical doctors on staff, we have other licensed medical providers such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants. We have medical assistants on staff, we have registered nurses. We have case manager on staff, we have a PrEP navigator on staff. We have enrollment specialists who can help people sign up for health insurance. And we have an administrative staff as well as myself as the clinic director.”
To ensure a broad safety net, APLA collaborates with a variety of partners on a frequent basis at King / Drew or in the broader community. Lee noted,“ One of the things that I helped develop when I was still working at Charles R Drew University was a coalition of HIV providers here on the Martin Luther King medical campus. We work with Martin Luther King Center for Public Health, we work with the Oasis clinic, we work with Drew C. A. R. E. S., we work with the Martin Luther King Community Hospital, and the Outpatient Center. We meet quarterly, we call it the push cord coalition, the Partnership for Unified Services and HIV. We share data, we cross-refer patients. Startup has been a
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 28