Future of health clinic in danger

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- In Houston's Denver Harbor neighborhood, residents consider their Vecino Health Center a godsend. Fabiola Saldana has been a patient here for six years.

"I can come in, same-day appointment," she says. "They have a dental branch. My six-year-old son, he loves it. It's very important because a lot of the neighbors don't have transportation."

The clinic is federally funded, in part, getting a government grant every year to offset the costs of treating the poor or uninsured, and offering health education in addition to treatment and prevention. The need is so great that the clinic is halfway to privately funding a major expansion.

"Once we're completed, we'll be able to see an additional 6,000 patients," explains CEO Daniel Montez.

He says, however, that expansion and the clinic's future period is in danger if Congress doesn't act soon to keep funding neighborhood clinics. "It would make it extremely difficult for us just to survive and continue to provide care."

The concerns have reached Houston Congressman Gene Green.

"They're federally funded," says Rep. Green, a Houston Democrat, "but they're also based on how much you can afford to pay."

He says the funding has been bipartisan for years but it is in jeopardy if a new budget isn't passed and the funding is allowed to expire at the end of 2015. So he wrote a letter signed by 250 other members of Congress, urging leaders to take action.

"In our area," he says, "since we're still behind the curve, it impacts us more than it would other urban areas."

A cost perhaps greater than the money spent to keep these clinics open in neighborhoods that need them. Montez considers it a necessity.

"Those people (we serve) end up going back to where they went before," he cautions. "Emergency rooms, hospital districts which are already overflowing. It's not good for taxpayers."