County health district eyes primary care, dental clinic

Amid a statewide health care shortage, the Southern Nevada Health District plans to begin offering primary care and dental services at its 280 S. Decatur Blvd. location.

The district’s health board approved the program at a Thursday meeting, allowing district staff to hire clinicians to offer services five days a week.

Chief Health Officer Dr. Joe Iser said he hopes to have dental services, including cleanings and restorative treatments, up and running by July 1, with the timeline for primary care services pending the hiring of a team of about five doctors, nurses and physician’s assistants.

“Our community is so underserved, the entire state,” Iser said in an interview Thursday. “You need primary care providers to help keep you safe and help keep you healthy.”

The program comes after health district officials surveyed its visitors and found nearly 60 percent didn’t have a regular doctor. About three in four people surveyed said they were interested in getting primary care services through the health district.

Iser said the initiative aims to address the dearth of care available to Medicaid patients, though anyone with commercial health insurance or no insurance at all will be accepted. Because Medicaid reimbursements for doctors in Nevada are lower than most other states across the country, some clinicians choose not to take the insurance at all, he said, leaving the state’s lowest-income patients with nowhere to go.

District projections show the clinic could use Medicaid reimbursements, plus reimbursement dollars through the federal 340B pharmacy program along with grant funding, to at least break even in the clinic’s first year.

Any additional revenue, Iser said at the meeting, would be reinvested in the program.

Over time, Iser said the district will likely apply for designation as a federally qualified health center, giving access to enhanced Medicaid reimbursements. A few years down the line, Iser said he hopes the health district can gain status as a community health center, which would open doors to additional grant funding.

If successful, services would eventually be expanded at the health district’s East Las Vegas and North Las Vegas locations and at a site in Mesquite.

Contact Jessie Bekker at jbekker@ reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter.