Few stories are as dramatic as the evolution of the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center in Kansas City. The first African-American board-certified OB/GYN in the Kansas City area, Dr. Samuel Rodgers strongly believed that the family serves as the cornerstone of a community. He left a thriving private practice to create a workable healthcare system because he understood that when a community is rooted in family, it is impervious to society’s ills, even when those challenges are as fundamentally depraved as segregation and inequality.
Dr. Rodgers was also steadfast in his philosophy that families at all socioeconomic levels will thrive if they have access to essential services, such as healthcare, within their communities. As the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center approaches its golden anniversary, these family-based principles remain the foundation upon which all of Kansas City has come to depend for honest, affordable healthcare.
Dr. Rodgers was so determined to offer minority families the same healthcare, regardless of their status or where they lived, that he opened his first health center in the Wayne Miner Housing Project, named for the Buffalo Soldier who was the last American to be killed in World War I. Dr. Rodgers was indefatigable in his lobbying efforts for the center in Washington, D.C. He even returned to school when in his sixties, to obtain a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Michigan.
The Miner Health Center was the first federally qualified health center (FQHC) in Missouri and just the fourth in the entire United States. Today the Samuel U. Rodgers Award is presented annually by the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). According to the NACHC website: “The award is presented to a distinguished primary care clinician who exemplifies excellence in clinical practice and leadership at the local, state or national level.”
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Healthcare at that time was anything but convenient for thousands of Kansas City’s African–American citizens. Prior to the opening of the Wayne Miner Health Center, families had to travel across town on the bus and wait in long lines for hours before seeing a doctor, often while watching others receive preferential treatment.
These patients often missed work as a result, and lacking insurance, they faced crippling medical bills. Even the expense of paying for a crosstown bus could harm their finances. Any follow-up treatment proved equally arduous, resulting in mounting bills and sometimes a loss of employment altogether due to missed shifts.
The General Hospital at the time was an academic institution that emphasized academics over long-term care. Yet medical schools were often the sole healthcare option for the impoverished. Prescriptions were often written without consideration for whether the patient could obtain or afford the medicine.
To remedy this injustice, Dr. Rodgers envisioned a local healthcare center that would produce better outcomes for patients and, by extension, for the community at large.
The Wayne Miner Health Center allowed the first physicians to schedule actual appointments for poor patients. Dr. Rodgers was the first physician to focus on scheduling appointments for under-served patients. A pharmacy was placed within the center, for the convenience of patients, and Medicaid registration took place onsite as well. Dr. Rodgers created a patient chart so that all of the members of the medical team could collaborate toward a successful outcome. Finally, a patient’s social condition was also assessed and addressed for the first time. Housing services were created as a result of this new way of thinking.
In creating “allied healthcare,” Dr. Rodgers had, in fact, created the modern healthcare system. He was also responsible for developing “organized care,” in reality the first HMO. Not surprisingly, the first official HMOs were formed from his model.
There are several other highlights from the earliest days of today’s Rodgers Center. The organizational system saved the federal government millions of dollars, demonstrating the benefits of such a system. Staff members learned foreign languages, which was another first, the intention once again being to better assist patients.
In 1968 the Health Center served thousands of Cuban refugees, the first time an American hospital had treated political refugees en masse. This care continued with Vietnamese refugees throughout the 1970s. President Nixon recognized these accomplishments at the time, selecting the Wayne Miner Health Center to host 12 Chinese physicians to visit as part of a highly classified cultural exchange.
In 1988, the Wayne Miner Health Center was renamed in honor of Dr. Rodgers. Today, the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center still serves a diverse community, providing high-quality, affordable care for all patients across greater Kansas City. Since 2007, the number of patients served has grown from 17,000 to nearly 25,000.
“At one time, we were interpreting seven languages,” says acting CEO Bob Theis, who recalls that Dr. Rodgers was impressed by this cultural diversity. “Now we are in the thirties. We’re like a mini-United Nations here.”
Rodgers Health Center has also been on the leading edge of insurance signups as part of the Affordable Care Act mandate, (ACA) which means the center can create a safety net for those who have never experienced such access to care. The growth in insured patients has been remarkable, reducing the number of uninsured from 58% in 2007 to 35% today.
More remarkable still, uninsured children went from 35% to just 6%, a 29% reduction over the past decade! To reach these milestones and the center’s future goals, Rodgers Health Center offers counselors who help individuals and families enroll in the ACA and Missouri Healthnet Insurance.
Primary care is the most important factor in reducing costs and emergency room visits. Rodgers Health Center understands the importance of primary care, from prenatal care through the final years of a person’s life. Rodgers Health offers OB/GYN services, pediatric services, adult care and geriatric care.
“Education is the key to it all,” says Theis. “In prenatal care, a healthy birth is about $5,000. An unhealthy birthrate could cost the whole system about $50,000 over the course of the first year!”
The mission to create high-quality, affordable care for everyone has received significant national attention. Rodgers Health Center has been recognized as being in the top one-third of all FQHCs in America, and it is considered an industry leader.
“I visited many health centers in New York City,” observes Emma Nakakuki, treasurer for the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center Foundation. “What we have here at Samuel Rodgers is not what most people would consider a health care facility. We have a vortex of compassion and care and a level of servicing that is really off the charts.”
Education is the key to it all. In prenatal care, a health birth is about $5,000. An unhealthy birthrate could cost the who system about $50,000 over the course of the first year!
Rodgers Health Center is determined to serve and reflect all ethnicities with its equally diverse staff. This culturally appropriate care demonstrates, for example, how comfortable a refugee or non-English speaker feels when being treated by someone who looks similar to themselves and who provides thoughtful, respectful, dignified medical care.
Rodgers Health Center is determined to sustain this legacy in the future. Education, quality, and new areas of care represent some of the significant initiatives under development. Increasing donor numbers, a direct result of concentrated publicity during this season of giving, is yet another goal.
True to Dr. Rodgers’ legacy as an OB/GYN, the health system that bears his name maintains one of the best prenatal care records in the Midwest. The doctors at Rodgers Health Center have long recognized the important bonds linking mother and child in terms of proper nutrition and development that result in thriving rather than surviving. Most importantly, every expectant mother can count on Rodgers Health regardless of insurance or ability to pay.
The Samuel U. Rodgers Health Care Center was established on the principle that everyone is entitled to excellent health care services, regardless of his or her heritage or ability to pay. Fifty years later, Rodgers Health continues to set the standard for what high-quality, affordable healthcare should look and feel like for us all.
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