What’s at stake?
West Fresno is a health care desert. Even with the new United Health Centers facility that just opened west of the 99, advocates and officials say there’s a long way to go in terms of providing residents with adequate access to health care.
The opening of a new United Health Centers medical facility on Shields and Brawley avenues marks the latest desperately-needed step toward addressing West Fresno’s health care desert.
But even with the new health center that will add four primary care providers once fully staffed, the city’s communities west of the 99 freeway still fall short of standard physician-to-resident ratios.
Local officials stressed the need for more providers at a ribbon-cutting outside the new center Friday.
“You talk to anyone who lives on this side of town, and they’ll tell you that they feel like this is the new tale of two cities,” said Councilmember Annalisa Perea, “east and west of highway 99. But I’m proud to say today we are closing that gap.”
The new facility will hire 40 health care employees at full capacity. Right now, it has about 15 of those positions filled, UHC CEO Justin Preas told Fresnoland following Friday’s ceremony.
The new hires will include two additional primary care providers on top of a physician and nurse practitioner they’ve already added to the staff, Preas said. They also will hire two more dentists on top of the one already on-boarded, plus a chiropractor and mental health providers.
The center will also offer patients free transportation to and from appointments, Preas added.
This is the second new UHC facility to open west of the 99 in the last three months. The nonprofit health care provider started welcoming patients to a new health center on Cesar Chavez Boulevard in southwest Fresno in November.
For west central Fresno communities north of Clinton, the new UHC location became only the second doctor’s office serving the area home to upward of 50,000, with the other being Valley Health Team on Ashlan.
In the absence of adequate medical providers, community organizations like the Highway City Community Development, Inc. have worked to fill the gap.
April Henry, the organization’s president, said their community needs between 30 and 40 doctors to fully meet the needs of residents.
“Every new health care initiative that is opening its doors in the west 99 area is a positive towards getting to that goal,” she said, “but we have a long way to go.”
The organization hosts a monthly health clinic at its Teague Community Resource Center on Polk Avenue through partnerships with multiple local health care providers, including UCSF Fresno Mobile Health, the Fresno County Office of Education Mobile Health, Valley Children’s Hospital and others. It also hosts back-to-school immunization clinics.
Preas echoed that there’s more work to be done addressing health care gaps in Fresno.
“No matter how many sites we open and services open up,” he said, “we’re just so terribly underserved here in the Valley.”
A key piece of the puzzle moving forward, he added, is “more teaching and training and retention” of health care providers in the Central Valley.
For years, Fresno has been behind the curve with training not just enough doctors but also nurses and other medical professionals.
“If we don’t have providers,” Preas said, “we can’t run health centers, and see people, and provide care.”
