[Photo: Regina H. Boone]
The clinic was barely open but the tiny waiting room already was full: Three cases of diabetes — two entangled with hepatitis C — and at least one case each of of hypertension, obesity and a dangerously thickened heart muscle.
Most worrisome, though, were the things that might not show up on a chart in another doctor’s office but that immeasurably complicate things: Homelessness. Poverty. Drug addiction. Severe mental illness.
To nurse practitioner Lisa Norris, that’s the frustration and joy of her job at Detroit Central City Community Mental Health in Midtown Detroit.
Opened in March, Detroit Central City is the first community mental health clinic in southeast Michigan to become a specially designated, federally qualified health clinic to integrate mental health care with physical health, or primary care.
So far the program has $793,750 in federal funding under the Affordable Care Act to establish a clinic that integrates care. That means mental health and substance abuse counselors are working side by side with medical staff such as Norris to serve some of the city’s most troubled residents.
http://www.freep.com/article/20140721/NEWS01/307210018/new-clinic-downtown-Detroit-mental-health
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