Silver City Health Center
1428 S. 32nd Street
Kansas City, KS 66106
Phone: 913-831-1111
Silver City Health Center (SCHC), located in the Argentine community of Kansas City, Kansas, has been managed by KU Health Partners (KUHP) since July 2006, in a collaborative venture that brings the University of Kansas School of Nursing and School of Allied Health into partnership with the School of Medicine, which formerly operated the clinic. This partnership strengthens operating efficiencies, expands health education and prevention programs, and promotes interdisciplinary services to meet the health disparities of Wyandotte County residents.
Silver City Health Center exists to address the primary care, health education, and health prevention issues that impede health and well-being; and impact the illness, injury and chronic disease trajectories of residents in Wyandotte County. The clinic commits to and provides high-quality, culturally-sensitive, and holistic services within the limited resources available to many residents in need of care. Our services include comprehensive primary care, health education and community outreach aimed at prevention, and tailored programs that ameliorate or substantially reduce the effects of chronic disease.
As a community-based health center, SCHC serves English- and Spanish-speaking Argentine community members of all ages. Showing sensitivity to the income and lack of resources available to many of our clients is one way we promote access to care. Silver City utilizes an income-based sliding fee scale for patients without medical insurance, which is updated annually according to Federal Poverty Level guidelines. With a high volume of uninsured patients who qualify for free or discounted care, SCHC's services are a critical resource to the community.
Silver City provides a broad range of primary care, health education, and health prevention services to manage illness, injury and chronic disease. Examples of primary care and prevention services available at SCHC include well baby/child care, immunizations, physical therapy, medical nutrition therapy, sports physicals, vision and hearing screenings, and adult well care. Illness, injury, and chronic care treatments include lifestyle teaching, medication management, performing laboratory testing, minor surgical procedures, managing baseline and longitudinal clinical data (ECG and laboratory testing), and urgent care. Chronic care management aimed at amelioration or reduction of complications is also offered.
Silver City Health Center models and provides evidence-based practice that engages a multidisciplinary team trained in culturally-appropriate patient education and care management strategies, hallmarks of an academic-service entity. Our goal is to advance SCHC based on successful models used in other communities, better using increasingly scarce healthcare resources by optimizing the appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities of various physician, nurse, and allied health providers. Our tested model of patient- and family-centered care aligns closely with national, state and regional recommendations for the medical home concept, or as we prefer to call it, the primary care home. An exemplar that highlights our care model is presented in a review of a representative SCHC patient visit with Sara Morales.
Silver City Health Center serves in an active leadership role in many of the activities of the safety net community in Wyandotte County. KU Health Partners believes our five-year lease in the Argentine community delivers a strong message about our intent to remain a robust, viable healthcare provider in this area of the Kansas City community. The Schools of Nursing, Allied Health and Medicine, together with the University of Kansas Medical Center, are financially and though our missions committed to enhancing SCHC's multidisciplinary approach to health professions education. We believe a patient-centered model of care and community outreach will enable us to more fully assess healthcare needs and gaps in services, and decrease health disparities, through implementation of programs and services that address these insufficiencies.
Nurse-managed health centers (NMHC) differ from traditional clinics in that prevention and health promotion is emphasized, in addition to treatment of acute and chronic illness. NMHCs provide individualized care focused on holistic needs, including the patient's perception of the health problem and concerns about health and health care. There is an emphasis on wellness and self care through provision of education and information necessary to make healthy lifestyle choices and health care decisions. A NMHC treats the whole person not just the symptoms or disease. Studies show that nurse-managed clinics are cost-efficient and patient satisfaction is high.
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