Municipal and Prince Georges County officials hope that state money to subsidize primary care practices will improve inner-Beltway community residents access to health care and decrease their reliance on the emergency room.

Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown (D) announced in January that Seat Pleasant, Fairmount Heights and Capitol Heights would form one of the countys five Health Enterprise Zones, which will get additional funding to attract primary care providers as well as preventative efforts to promote nutrition and healthy lifestyles.

Dr. Ernest L. Carter, deputy health officer at the countys health department, said the county is receiving a grant from the state for $5 million over the next four years, all of which will be used in the ZIP code that includes the three municipalities. He said the area is one of the worst in the state in terms of the ratio between physicians and residents.

There are virtually no physicians per 3,500 residents, Carter said. The health indicators are significantly not meeting the U.S. [public health] standards.

Carter said the Capitol Heights areas provider to population ratio of about 1 provider per 3,500 residents is far below the national standard ratio of 1 to 2,000. When patients dont have easy access to primary and preventative care, they tend to over-utilize the emergency room, causing both an unnecessary financial burden both for themselves and for the health care system, Carter said.

When you dont have primary care you tend to let your diseased state go, so when you do get care you have to be hospitalized, he said. And because they have disjointed care, their medical records arent available and a lot of times they cant describe all of the health events in their life. They end up having redundancies of care like repeat X-rays, so almost everything that causes costs to go up are a function of not being able to access primary care.

Much of the annual $1.2 million in funding will go toward helping physicians set up primary care facilities in the area, Carter said, from tax breaks to loans and other subsidies. The rest of the funding will go toward other initiatives, like health screenings and informational sessions, he said.

And the county hopes to coordinate with municipalities conducting their own outreach efforts, Carter said.

Seat Pleasant Mayor Eugene Grant said that he wants to set up a health house to host regular events for residents, from health screenings and blood testing to workshops on healthy eating, exercise and diabetes management.

Those kinds of educational things are what help to give the desired health outcomes we expect, Grant said. ...By doing all of these things [with increased primary care access], we believe we can realize a reduction in the utilization of the ER, reducing re-admission rates and making sure people dont use the hospital like a clinic.

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Gazette.Net: New health care subsidies target inner-Beltway communities