Uninsured on San Francisco Development of Community

¶ … Uninsured on San Francisco

Development of Community Health Support Services

San Francisco has one of the most extensive and successful health support systems for uninsured individuals in any major metropolitan area in the United Stats, and though budgetary concerns are a constant issue for this system and its constituent organizations the increasing numbers of uninsured individuals will likely not cause a major burden to these organizations in the near future (SFFC 2010; SFHP 2010; USCB 1998). Support services will almost certainly develop at a slower rate than during times of economic surplus and overall abundance, and service provision and program development alike will both focus more on general care provision rather than more intensive and long-term preventative care and education campaigns (SFHP 2010; SPUR 2010). These will be the major impacts on health service and support development programs of increasing uninsured citizens in San Francisco.

Communication with Stakeholders

Due to the longstanding nature of the principles, infrastructure, and organizations involved in the provision of health services and support to uninsured and underinsured individuals in San Francisco, it is not expected that increases in the number of uninsured and underinsured citizens in the city will have a major impact on communications abilities (SFFC 2010; SFHP 2010). Government officials and community leaders have well-established communications channels and links and historic events have already shown a large measure of flexibility in communications capacities for these systems (USCB 1998; OLSE 2010).

Impact on San Francisco Free Clinic

As a major neighborhood provider of medical services to the uninsured and underinsured, the San Francisco Free Clinic has experienced a definite downturn in its financial statements in terms of the level of reimbursement for its costs as numbers of uninsured rose in the past three to five years (SFFC 2010; SPUR 2010). The clinic is still able to provide services to most individuals that seek medical assistance there, but without receiving funding increases the level of reimbursement per-procedure and per-patient has definitely been reduced (SFFC 2010). This has made operations somewhat more difficult, especially as resources become more difficult to obtain and other overhead expenses have been rising, but due to city support there is also no great fear concerning future stability or security (SFFC 2010; SFHP 2010).

Future Risks

This does not mean that a continued rise in the number of uninsured and underinsured individuals in San Francisco would not have an adverse effect on the San Francisco Free Clinic's operational ability, however. Obviously, the greater the number of people serviced by the organization with the same level of resources means a lower level of resources to be devoted to each individual patient and/or procedure. As the City of San Francisco is facing greater financial burdens for a variety of reasons in the current era, it seems unlikely that increased funding will be made readily available in a way that will truly serve the needs of the clinic and the community and absorb additional potential losses (SPUR 2010).

Initiatives

Two initiatives that could potentially serve to build the organizations strength and enable it to meet these risks are an increased marketing of preventative services offered as a means of creating lower-resources means of addressing community health issues, and implementing internal cost-saving measures that focus on reducing waste and improving efficiency especially in the use of material resources. Supplies and materials comprise a large portion of the spending budget for the San Francisco Free Clinic as well as for other similar organizations, and reducing these costs could provide a major asset and improvement of the financial strength of the organization (SFFC 2010; SFHP 2010). Preventative health measures are also often much cheaper and less time consuming, and provide greater overall economic advantages through reducing losses in productivity due to illness (OLSE 2010).