Southside city clinic halts some screenings
Alderman: Why wasn’t council notified earlier?
The Milwaukee Health Department is no longer providing mammograms and some other preventive health screenings for low-income women at its Southside Health Center.
For years, the city clinic had provided mammograms important for the early detection of breast cancer and other screenings through the Well Woman Program, a federally and state-funded program that covers the cost of such screenings for women with little or no health insurance.
Beginning in October, the city clinic stopped providing mammograms, after Voyageur Radiology, the group that remotely read the mammogram results, ended its contract with the city, said Dominique Hyatt-Oates, the health department’s Well Woman Program manager.
Between 300 and 500 women per year got mammograms from the Southside Health Center, the city’s clinic at 1639 S. 23rd St., according to health department figures from 2018 to 2022.
The city was notified in August that the group would end its contract.
The health department tried to find another radiology group to fill the role. But in the end, officials decided to pivot and focus on connecting people enrolled in the Well Woman Program to outside hospitals and clinics for mammograms, clinical breast exams, screenings for cervical cancer and other preventive care, instead of providing those services in-house, HyattOates said.
In this way, the health department hopes to enroll more people in the Well Woman Program and quickly connect them to free screenings. It took up a lot of the department’s resources and staff time to run a weekly clinic offering mammograms, she said.
“We’re able to actually provide more when we’re focusing on patient navigation,” Hyatt-Oates said.
Ald. Michael Murphy was disappointed that the Common Council was not immediately notified of the changes by the department.
“It sounds like less services for the populations certainly on the south side of Milwaukee,” he said in an interview. “If you’re going to eliminate a service that’s being provided to improve women’s health, you would think they would notify the council of that.”
In a statement issued this week, Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis said officials were in the process of meeting with council members and other stakeholders about the changes.
“The decision to shift services in the Wisconsin Well Woman Program to
ensure our city’s residents receive more comprehensive, free care came quicker than anticipated,” he said.
In past years and under previous administrations, the health department struggled to maintain breast and cervical cancer screenings for women in the program. In 2018, some women were placed on waiting lists after screening services at the Southside Health Center were disrupted, the Journal Sentinel reported at the time.
In 2022, the Southside Health Center provided about 340 mammograms, according to the health department. Another 640 mammograms for women enrolled by the city in the Well Woman Program were done at outside health care organizations, such as Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center, Aurora Sinai Medical Center, Ascension St. Francis Hospital and Ascension Columbia St. Mary’s-Milwaukee.
The people who got mammograms and other screenings at the Southside Health Center were primarily Latina and didn’t have health insurance, HyattOates said. Many of them were undocumented, she added. The health department will now help those women set up appointments for screenings at one of the outside health care organizations that can provide them for free under the program.
Hyatt-Oates does not think the change will present a barrier for those women. Rather, she said, it will help them become connected to and become established patients of health care organizations better equipped to serve their needs.
“When we send them to the health care systems, now they know and they have the experience of going to Sinai or going to St. Francis,” she said. “When they have an issue, ... the hope is that you’ve done it before, you can do it again. You can go and navigate those health care systems, and you have a familiarity and a comfort now.”
Dr. Patricia Téllez-Girón, co-chair of the Latino Health Council in Madison, said it works similarly in Madison, where the public health department helps connect people in the Well Woman Program to outside providers for screenings.
“It actually works very well. It connects women to services,” said TéllezGirón, who also is an associate professor with the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But Téllez-Girón said the Milwaukee Health Department will have to make sure it educates its patients about the shift in services, so that no one has a problem getting care.
“It has been a lifesaving program for many women here in Madison and anywhere where the program is,” she said. “Because otherwise they wouldn’t have a way to get this done.”
In the past, Well Woman Program managers across the state have reported problems with women being billed for screenings that should be free or those bills going to collections.
Hyatt-Oates said that anyone enrolled in the Well Woman Program should not receive a bill. If they accidentally receive a bill, she said, it’s likely due to the health care organization not filling out the proper paperwork in a timely manner.
“We have brought on staff specifically to address that to make sure it’s not a barrier or a deterrent,” she said. “We actually have made significant gains and strides to where we have regular case conferencing with Aurora’s billing team, and we have direct contacts with Ascension’s billing team that we’re able to handle those very, very quickly. That’s something new as of May.”