Affordable health care

While health care in Southeast Missouri is accessible to all, it's not always affordable for all. Skyrocketing prescription drug costs and rising insurance premiums mean some people can't afford a visit to the doctor or dentist.

Cross Trails Medical Center is one provider that focuses on serving the poorer populations throughout the region. The center just opened a new facility in Cape Girardeau and continues to operate clinics in Advance and Marble Hill.

Cross Trails receives 30 percent of its budget through a federal grant that requires it to serve underserved, uninsured, under-insured and low-income patients. The goal is for clinics like Cross Trials to focus on providing better public health to underserved regions of the country.

Patients pay on a sliding scale according to their income. Medicare and Medicaid payments also are accepted, which makes the clinic appealing to lower-income families and the elderly who use those programs.

Nearly any service that a primary-care physician can offer is available at the clinic. There are waiting rooms and patient rooms for examinations, an on-site laboratory, billing offices and plans for a pharmacy in the future.

The new site also includes exam rooms for dental patients, which wasn't available at the clinic's previous location. Oral hygiene and good oral health is important for all patients, particularly because many patients with little income usually wait until an emergency occurs before seeing a dentist.

But the staff at Cross Trails hopes their new location and addition of a dentist will help curb emergency care and give them a chance to focus on education. And they seem to have an overflow of patients, attracting them from Southeast Missouri and as far away as St. Louis, Southern Illinois and western Kentucky.

The new facility at 408 S. Broadview should serve Cross Trails Medical Clinic well as it continues to provide affordable and accessible care to patients with limited incomes.