SILVER CITY, N.M. — Beatrice Resendiz grew up in this small town of miners, artists and college students near the Gila National Forest. A diabetic, she set aside her own needs to work, care for her four granddaughters and help minister to her mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease.
Only when Resendiz ended up in the emergency room without vision in one eye, her left arm numb, did she pay attention to her own health. “I thought it was an aneurysm, “ Resendiz said. “But it was stress and diabetes. “
A similar fate befell Cynthia Marquez, who moved to Silver City from Houston in 2012. Several weeks later, she ended up in the hospital, diagnosed with diabetes. “I had no clue what was going on and I had nowhere to go, “ Marquez said. “I could have died. “
Both women credit their survival to Hidalgo Medical Services, a nonprofit public health clinic that has set out to develop a model for delivering quality, affordable health care to rural communities, reported The New Mexican.
New Mexico needs such models. Of the state’s 33 counties, 32 lack enough health care providers, such as doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, mental health counselors and dentists. It’s hard to attract primary care providers to the state’s rural areas and harder still to keep them.
Financing public health care poses another problem: Although the state’s Medicaid program has expanded, trips to the emergency room for non-emergencies such as colds and ear infections have increased. Costs ballooned to $116 million in 2015 from $99 million in 2014, according to New Mexico’s Human Services Department.
Hidalgo Medical Services is well positioned to address those separate, but related, problems. The group was founded in 1995 by a coalition of community leaders, led by health policy expert Charlie Alfero, to fill the gap left after the only public health clinic in Hidalgo County closed a decade before. “We had a blank slate, “ Alfero said. “We asked the community what they needed. Over time, we decided that primary care was medical, dental, behavioral health and social needs. “
Although the group has grown since, it hasn’t wavered from its long-term goal: providing a better health care system focused on patients’ needs. Hidalgo Medical Services now provides primary care through 13 sites to residents in Hidalgo and Grant counties. It also houses the Southwest Center for Health Innovation, a health policy and advocacy organization run by Alfero.
So what makes it revolutionary? The clinic’s model has four main components: It builds a health care team for each patient, expands the number of medical residencies offered at the clinic, shares an electronic record program among all providers and promotes health care careers to young people.
“Our vision is fundamentally about changing health care delivery across the state and the nation, not just in Hidalgo and Grant counties, “ said Dan Otero, chief executive officer of Hidalgo Medical Services.
