Thank you for visiting our sister site! Texoma Giving Partners is the funds and endowment department of Texoma Health Foundation and is dedicated to the establishment, management and success of philanthropic partners in our community.
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Apr 14, 2022
Hi again, Texoma!
We are thrilled to share another installment in our ongoing series highlighting THF grantees. These organizations make a powerful impact within our community in their own distinctive ways. You can directly support their services by giving to THF’s Community Fund. When THF receives a donation to this fund, 100% of those dollars go back to the community through grants and giving. Thank you for helping us make a difference right here in Texoma – every single day.
THF Team
Fannin Health Clinic (FHC) is a non-profit medical practice dedicated to serving uninsured and low-income patients in the Fannin County area with a mission to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of this vulnerable population.
FHC provides health care services for adults, including:
Through the provision of these vital services, the FHC team identified some very specific and underserved needs within the community. “We run a primary health clinic with very diverse needs, and through that, we identified a specific need for women’s health,” explains Kelli Bowen, FHC Care Manager. “We felt that offering specific women’s health services would help us better serve our community. And really, it’s a little misleading when we call it women’s health because it involves the partners of those women as well.”
In addition to a focus on women’s health, FHC serves those with chronic health conditions that require ongoing care. Many of these individuals have diabetes, hypertension, and respiratory conditions like asthma and COPD. Because it can be difficult or prohibitively expensive for these individuals to obtain private insurance, and they don’t qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, they are left vulnerable and unable to afford even basic care.
One of the most challenging costs for these patients can be prescription medication and diagnostic testing. Carol Amlin, FHC Financial Manager, works to negotiate prescription drug costs for these patients. “The funds help us maintain prescription drug costs, lab and x-ray costs, to meet the needs of the patients we see,” says Amlin. “Our diagnostic ability and follow up ability are greatly increased because of the funds we receive.”
By proactively managing these chronic health conditions, FHC is able to help patients prevent flare-ups and acute incidents that often require emergency care, which can strain those systems for the wider community. So, the critical services FHC provides helps ease the burden on our entire local health care system.
Keeping up with technology and communication advances to ensure its patients are able to access the ongoing care they need is another priority for FHC. As part of her doctorate program, Bowen helped organize a HIPAA-compliant texting program. These texting capabilities allow FHC to meet the patients they serve right where they are.
“It allows patients to communicate with us when they are experiencing problems,” Bowen explains. “We can check in about medication side effects or other concerns. This helps the patient know we want to hear about issues so we can deal with them sooner, which improves quality of life and saves the community money. This way, we are keeping their symptoms managed and under control.”
The fact that FHC is a volunteer-run and community-funded clinic is truly exceptional. “The volunteers are so dedicated; it doesn’t seem like a job,” says Amlin. “Once a woman came up to me and asked, ‘Who pays for all this?’ I was able to say, ‘There’s a lot of wonderful people in this community that pay for this.’ She couldn’t believe it! The patients are all so grateful because they can’t get healthcare in any other way.”
These services align with THF’s mission and our partnership with the Fannin Health Clinic allows us to reach our goals smarter and quicker than we could do alone. If you would like to donate to the THF Community Fund or learn more about Texoma Giving Partners visit www.texomagivingpartners.org To learn more about FHC’s services, check out their website.
