My visit to Poteau’s Health and Wellness Center

I recently was invited to visit The Health and Wellness Center (HWC) in Poteau to learn about the care it provides for Oklahomans in Poteau and throughout rural, eastern Oklahoma. HWC reports itself to be the largest rural community health center in Oklahoma, serving greater than 30,000 patients per year, employing 400-plus health care providers and staff, and with an annual operating budget of more than $50 million. In addition to providing comprehensive, integrated primary care, HWC offers dental, behavioral health, psychiatry, optometry, pharmacy and substance use disorder treatment. (With) May being Mental Health Awareness Month, (it) was the perfect time for me to visit HWC. I appreciate their commitment to addressing our state’s mental health and substance use disorder challenges. I celebrate the work of this center as well as all our other mental health care providers in House District 3. People living in rural areas face special challenges getting health care and are more likely to report being in poor health. To address some of these barriers, HWC offers transportation assistance and charges patients on a sliding fee scale based on their income so that no one is denied care due to lack of insurance or inability to pay. They also employ integrated care specialists to make accessing care, as well as other community resources, as easy as possible for patients with chronic health conditions. Today, HWC has seven health center sites, a mobile dental unit that regularly cares for schoolchildren and other community members, a mobile Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) unit, and two inpatient substance use disorder treatment facilities that allow individuals to heal alongside their families and reintegrate into their community. HWC also recently expanded to operate 21 Head Start early-childhood education programs. In addition to providing free education, HWC Adventure Head Start programs provide healthy meals, connects families to community resources and offer integrated health care services on a sliding fee scale. We are fortunate to have such a visionary organization that’s so passionate about improving not just access to care but the overall health of our community. For more information about HWC, go to www.healthwellnessok.com or call (800) 6409741.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has signed into law several bills that will improve public safety and help our local law enforcement operate more efficiently. House Bill 1123 will allow law enforcement officers responding to the scenes of fatal accidents the authority to remove the bodies of the deceased in a more timely manner. Currently, bodies may not be moved until a medical examiner completes an on-site investigation. In rural areas, this can sometimes take hours or even all day. I authored this bill, which gives law enforcement officers the ability to have the bodies removed once they’ve documented the accident scene and taken pictures and measurements. House Bill 3530 will give grants to local sheriffs’ departments so they can assign deputies to assist the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) in their inspections of marijuana grows. The $65,000 grant LeFlore County Sheriff Rodney Derryberry will receive will help in cracking down on illegal operations. Our county sheriffs know our local areas best, and this will improve public safety by ensuring only legal businesses are operating in our county and not drug cartels. OMMA inspectors are not law enforcement, and they don’t carry firearms. Yet they are often met with armed guards at medical marijuana facilities who are not always willing to allow entrance to those seeking to ensure operations are legal. OMMA compliance inspectors were denied access to properties 181 times between April 2021 and February 2022. This accounts for 9.6 percent of all inspections during that period. House Bill 3278 bill will ensure 911 dispatchers receive the training they need to administer life-saving first aid instructions over the phone. Dispatchers are literal first responders, and making sure they can help somebody administer CPR or other first-aid until emergency help can arrive will save lives. This bill changes the title of a 911 dispatcher to public safety telecommunicators, which identifies them as first responders who perform a public service by receiving and dispatching calls for emergency assistance. This will ensure they receive the specialized training other emergency medical services (EMS) personnel undergo. This bill is part of an ongoing process to modernize 911 services and training in our state, helping ensure the best outcomes possible in emergency situations. Finally, Stitt signed into law Senate Bill 1100, which prohibits nonbinary classifications on state birth certificates. The biological sex designation may only be male or female. The author of the bill says rightly that people are free to identify however they’d like to, but our official state documents need to include factual information, including the correct biological sex designation. This helps law enforcement and emergency responders to appropriately identify an individual they may be called upon to assist or transport. Plus, this is just common sense and does away with a lot of nonsense.

Remember to listen to me on KPRV Radio at 7:30 a.m. every Thursday for my legislative update. As always, if I can help you with anything, feel free to call my Capitol office at (405) 557-7413 or e-mail me at rick. west@okhouse.gov..