A safety-net health clinic for low-income people will open at the University of Houston Monday, a key component of its planned medical college.

The university is partnering with Georgetown-headquartered Lone Star Circle of Care, which already operates 19 such clinics around the state. The clinics, known as federally qualified health centers, provide health care to patients regardless of their ability to pay.

“This is really a win-win all the way around,” said Dr. Stephen Spann, founding dean of the UH medical school. “It helps us in our mission to provide care to this community. It provides us with a clinic on campus where we can train students and where our faculty can be involved in the care of patients. And it partners us with an excellent FQHC.”

Lone Star Circle of Care officials estimate that at full capacity, the UH clinic will see about 37,500 patients annually, many at follow-up appointments. The clinic will focus on primary care and behavioral health.

The clinic should help UH’s bid for accreditation of the medical college, which would be the first in Houston in nearly half a century. UH’s plan was approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in November, but still needs accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education.

Spann said he plans to submit accreditation application materials this week. The liaison committee process typically takes nearly a year, which would allow UH to begin enrolling students in fall 2020 if the submission is approved.

Federally qualified health centers charge patients without health insurance on a sliding scale, much needed in areas such as the Third Ward, which UH’s medical school would serve. Third Ward residents experience higher percentages of chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension than the greater Houston population.

Federally qualified health centers, a nearly 50-year-old program, took on an increased role under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. There are currently 72 such FQHC organizations in Texas — Lone Star Circle of Care counts as one — operating more than 300 sites.

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The centers receive better Medicaid reimbursement and are eligible for federal grant money because of the safety-net role they play. Lone Star has no such grant money for the UH clinic yet.

Rhonda Mundhenk, Lone Star’s CEO, called it a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to partner with a medical school getting off the ground.”

“The Third Ward is definitely in need of more primary-care and behavioral health services,” said Mundhenk. “This clinic will help reduce health inequality in the community where the university sits while giving student learners the opportunity to participate firsthand.”

Federally qualified health centers are typically not affiliated with medical schools, though Lone Star has sites at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas A&M College of Medicine’s clinical campus at Round Rock. Medical schools frequently are affiliated with safety-net hospitals — Baylor College of Medicine and McGovern Medical School at UTHealth staff the Harris Health System’s Ben Taub and Lyndon B. Johnson hospitals, respectively, for instance.

UH will lease the clinic space to Lone Star and the two institutions will supply staff: five primary care doctors provided by UH and 10 behavioral health specialists to be hired by Lone Star. UH will supplement the behavioral health staff with its own faculty leaders and students in psychology, counseling and social work.

Plans call for the UH school to focus on training primary care physicians to practice in underserved areas, a huge need in Houston and the state, given projected shortfalls.

Funding for the school will come from a combination of philanthropy, tuition and state money, which would include regular funding from the Texas Legislature. The Legislature’s current appropriations bill includes a $20 million rider for the UH medical school.

Lone Star, founded in 2001, currently sees about 322,000 patients around the state. Forty-seven percent of its patients are on Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, 29 percent are uninsured and 5 percent are on Medicare.

todd.ackerman@chron.com

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