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Health center needs donations to make dream a reality
By STEVE PENNThe Kansas City Star
A facility for the poor shouldn’t be a poor facility.
For 40 years, the operation that Samuel U. Rodgers founded has provided health services to the poor. Rodgers was a doctor who wanted to make sure no one was refused quality, compassionate care.
In 1968 he opened the Wayne Miner Health Center, the fourth community health center in the nation and the first in Kansas City. A few years later the operation was moved to a building across the street. In 1988, the health center was appropriately renamed after Rodgers.
Mamie Hughes Rodgers, who was married to Samuel U. Rodgers, thinks he would be proud to know his mission continues today.
“All of us say his spirit is still there,” Hughes Rodgers said. “He was just devoted and dedicated to quality medical care for whoever needed it. If they came to the door, they had to be allowed to come in.”
Today the operation serves that same mission. The center prevents people from falling through the cracks. More than a third of the patients are uninsured. Only 5 percent have private insurance, and the rest rely on Medicaid. In fact, in 2007 the facility provided $4 million in uncompensated care.
Rodgers would be proud of all that. But he wouldn’t be pleased that the clinic’s building has become antiquated and inefficient for providing patient care.
Patients have a difficult time getting around the center. Wait times to see a provider are way too long. The place is not accessible for those with disabilities.
It does not meet standards set by the Joint Commission, the health-care accreditation body.
In an effort to address those needs, a new facility is being planned just north of the old one at 825 Euclid Ave. On July 14, the board of directors and the staff of the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center will hold a groundbreaking celebration for the new facility.
U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, U.S. Rep Emanuel Cleaver and Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt are expected to attend. The new facility will be just over 60,000 square feet.
Hilda Fuentes, the CEO of Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center, said the move is long overdue.
“What we’re doing here is continuing Dr. Rodgers’ legacy,” Fuentes said. “But we can no longer provide 21st century medicine in a 1970 building. We can no longer provide the amount of services that are being required or requested of us, that are being requested by our community.”
The project will cost $21.3 million, and $13.8 million has been raised.
Among many donations and gifts, the project received $11.5 million from the state of Missouri last year. Other gifts and donations include a $1 million grant from the Hall Family Foundation.
Earlier this year, Cleaver secured a federal appropriation of $303,000.
Rodgers’ center employees chipped in $21,500.
By holding a groundbreaking ceremony and launching the public phase of the fundraising campaign, health center officials hope to spur even more donations.
“We want to thank our community for supporting us,” Fuentes said. “We also want to let the rest of the community know that we need their support in order to reach our $21 million goal.”
The new building will allow the facility to serve an additional 7,200 patients a year. And it will no doubt reduce the unnecessary use of emergency rooms across Kansas City.
More important, it will reaffirm the city’s commitment to providing treatment to the medically underserved, a mission that Samuel U. Rodgers passionately believed in.