How Essential is Your Community Health Care Provider?

by: ChrisQuint

Thu Sep 24, 2009 at 13:37:30 PM EDT

For communities like ours, local health centers are where many people turn for trusted health care.  Community health providers, like Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE), often serve as an entry point for essential health care needs.  Of PPNNE services, 95 percent are prevention-oriented.

Today, one in four women who receives contraceptive care does so at a women's health center.  One in six who obtains a Pap test or a pelvic exam does so at a women's health center, as do one-third of women who receive counseling, testing or treatment for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.  This basic health care is essential, particularly during difficult economic times, to give women the tools they need to protect and support their families.  This is particularly true when you consider that women of childbearing age spend a remarkable 68 percent more in out-of-pocket health care costs than men, in part because of reproductive health-related needs.

Two recent reports underscore the need for women's health to be an integral part of health care reform.

A recent report by the Department of Health and Human Services titled "Roadblocks to Health Care: Why the Current Health Care System Does Not Work for Women" places an important spotlight on the impact that the nation's health care crisis is having on women, particularly women of childbearing age.  The report states that "women are more vulnerable to high health care costs ... [because] women's reproductive health requires more regular contact with health care providers, including yearly Pap tests, mammograms, and obstetric care."

The second is a 2009 survey conducted for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that women are delaying their annual exams as a result of the economic downturn.

These reports demonstrate the importance of ensuring comprehensive health care reform that meets the needs of Maine, and American, women and their families. To do this, health plans participating in any health insurance exchange must include community health providers in their network.  

Protecting community health providers is fundamental to solving provider access issues that will come with expanding coverage and ensuring Americans can access trusted providers wherever they live.  Each year, Planned Parenthood health centers across the country perform nearly one million Pap Tests, identifying 93,000 women at risk of developing cervical cancer. And we provide more than 850,000 breast exams a year.  In Maine alone Planned Parenthood of Northern New England provides these preventive health care services to more than 13,000 patients each year.

Under health care reform, women must have access to reproductive health care and their women's health provider.  We call upon Senator Snowe to stand up for Maine women and ensure that they are not worse off after health care reform than they are today.    

How essential is your community health provider?  The answer is simple - if Mainer's want real health reform, community health providers like Planned Parenthood must be part of the plan.